


Quiet

by silvercistern



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Abelism, Coming of Age, Eventual Smut, M/M, The Six Swans, Youkai, deaf!akaashi, voluntarily mute Bokuto, written for bokuaka week 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 08:00:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 41,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6509641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvercistern/pseuds/silvercistern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, there was a wild young boy who understood neither the meaning of quiet, nor patience.  </p><p>Until one day, he was forced to learn both. </p><p>A Meiji-era retelling of the fairytale The Six Swans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

On the day the soldiers arrived with his father's katana, Koutarou knew that the worst had happened.

He was certain his father was dead even before the cart carrying his body rattled up to their gate. Such a man would have certainly died before he’d let such low-born filth touch a single blade of his daisho.

The soldiers stank. They carried cheap sabers and wore ill-fitting Western-style uniforms with rows of shiny buttons that gave them a dignity they didn’t deserve. Their fathers had probably been butchers or something equally vile. Or maybe they didn't have fathers at all.

Koutarou’s father had been a _samurai_.

Yet in the very shadow of that beloved man’s dead body, they mocked Koutarou's untamable crests of hair and his family's name.

"Your regrettable papa stood against the Emperor, straying from his own honor as a warrior. See that you don't do the same, little horned owl." They pulled the shorter wakizashi out of the cart and tossed all four blades to the ground like useless sticks.

“Be sure you don’t carry these in public,” they added. “Unless you want more of the same.”

Koutarou wanted to kill them or at least shout at them but he was too sad and scared to even move.

At six years old, his shoulders were a bit small to carry blame for that small cowardice.

But six years old was more than old enough to remember.

And so it was that Bokuto Koutarou - who had been the death of his own mother – found himself an orphan. The seventh child of a seventh child was left alone with a cold body and his father’s daisho, neither of which he had the slightest clue how to deal with. One he immediately concealed under their home for fear the swords would be taken away. The other he stared at until his grief was loud enough for the whole village to be privy to the fall of a once-respectable family.

His sister, Yukie, came home first, uncharacteristically rushing from the shrine at the speed of gossip, her red hakama swinging like bells as she ran. Her younger twin, Akinori, was soon to follow, slouching out of some dark corner where he’d been playing hooky from the advanced tutoring session intended to ready him for management of the modest lands he was set to inherit. The four remaining Bokuto brothers tumbled out of the new public school, whooping as they came. They knew nothing but that there was some kind of chaos in the village.

The boys skidded to a stunned stop when they saw the cart and its contents in front of their own home. Seven-year-old Haruki fell into an unstoppable fit of hacking coughs.

Koutarou was terrified and full of shame. He wept as his father’s body was dealt with, as his newly-arrived grandmother soothed him. He wept as his six elder siblings tried to restrain their own grief. The violence of his own sorrow racked his body, until he couldn’t stop shaking. At least the sound of his voice resounded through their valley. The mountains could hear him and echoed back their mourning.

But the death of a single representative of a bygone age and the wails of his crying children meant as little to a changing world as it did to the Emperor himself. The mountains echoed, but the seasons passed all the same.

 

 

Six years later, after the peaceful death of their grandmother, the children of the Bokuto family were left entirely to their own devices.

The two youngest – twelve-year-old Koutarou and thirteen-year-old Haruki –  were particularly liberated from any kind of oversight. The boys attended the compulsory public school only when the mood struck them. Such a mood struck rarely; much of their time was spent wrecking havoc in the village and surrounding forest. Eventually, Yukie forcefully suggested they at least go fishing to help the family if they were going to squander their time. 

Yukie herself had grown into a petite beauty with long, cherry-colored hair. Everyone said she was the very image of the mother that Koutarou had destroyed from the inside out. A distant cousin, who believed it necessary to “handle” the seven children that were essentially raising themselves, found no difficulty in setting up dozens of premature and unwanted marriage interviews for the oldest child in the Bokuto family. To her great chagrin, Akinori ignored the well-meaning woman’s efforts, and allowed his twin sister to permanently attach herself to the local shrine and lifelong virginity.

Perhaps more aptly put, the reluctant head of the family had neither initiative outside of his sensual paintings on screens and silks, nor any reason to deny his sister's request. He had much more reason to grant it: the shrine wasn’t large enough to house anyone so Yukie came home in the evenings. She continued to care for her six brothers - something she would not do were she to marry. She ate more than her share, but she was also a skilled cook and a competent housekeeper. Only Tatsuki could manage a household as well, and his strength would be greatly missed in the fields and rice paddies.

The cousin gave up, claiming that Akinori's permanent smirk and Yukie's singsong voice were intentionally designed to mock her. Since she had been uninterested in helping any of the other children, her familial goodwill was called into question anyway. It was likely she had simply been looking for bragging rights after making a good match.

Wataru, Yamato, and Tatsuki, who were fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen respectively, seemed to be the only members of the Bokuto family who understood that food and other necessities of life did not simply appear when you wanted them. Though tradition held that samurai did not work, samurai as both individuals and an institution had essentially been eliminated by Imperial reforms and armed conflicts. The Bokuto family was now just a family that held some land. So the three young men began to till those family holdings in the company of the peasants whom samurai had once had the questionable privilege of cutting down in the street on a whim.

Life was set to continue along on this mediocre path. If all went well, the more industrious brothers would find cheerful peasant wives at their completion of the Emperor's newly declared compulsory military service. Akinori would either know artistic fame or utter failure after his. Hardly the respectable tradition of a samurai family. Certainly nothing like the new prestige of holding office in the court of the Emperor. But definitely not a family on the verge of destitution. It was to be a life where needs were comfortably met and leisure time was frequently available. Nothing more, but certainly nothing less.

Despite this mundane eventuality for most of the Bokuto family, the entire population of Fukurodani felt confident that there was little future for Haruki and Koutarou.

The former was considerably more tragic. Haruki was small, like his mother, and sickly. Though he was an infinite source of mischief, there were many days when he struggled to breathe. The fact that he had made it to his adolescence had been shocking, but every spring his coughs grew more brutal. He’d been found unconscious in the street more than once. When he fell ill with sicknesses that spread through the village, the faces of the Bokuto siblings grew grim. It was unspoken but generally believed that the impish boy would die before he came to adulthood.

Koutarou on the other hand was very large for his age, with a particularly boisterous and impatient personality. His shock of grey and black-mottled hair spoke of something unnatural; the booming sound of his voice confirmed it. Even the manner of his birth – emerging from the womb the size of an infant two-months living – had been eerie. There were whispers that the golden-eyed boy had sucked the strength from his mother, and now he was leeching life from his brother as well. Even if that was nothing but nonsense, there was still no question that the child was simpleminded, wild, and unmanageable, worse even than his artistic eldest brother in his willful refusal to do his duty and focus single-mindedly on the care of his family.

Where was work for a young person such as this? Who would let their daughter marry the man he would become?

There were no answers. Other than, “not my daughter,” of course.

But if plants couldn’t grow from the empty soil, everyone would starve.

 

 

 

 

It was one of those crisp mornings on the teetering edge of spring where flowers and snow squalls lived side-by-side. Temperatures that seemed unbearably chilly in autumn felt balmy by comparison. The streams had thawed, the sakura were in bud, the plum trees were blossoming, and Koutarou was fishing alone in Sakanoshita Forest.

Not many people went into the forest at all, let alone the secluded spots that seemed to belong only to Koutarou and his closet brother. The villagers said it was easy to get lost, even for the most experienced woodsmen. The trees and moss and grass were just a shade too green, they claimed. It was unnatural.

But Koutarou liked it, and he never got lost. Since most everyone called him unnatural, maybe that was why: he and the forest were both peculiar, so Sakanoshita was kind to him. Whatever the reason, it meant he and Haruki had the best fishing streams, ponds, and even a lake all to themselves.

On this particular day, Haruki was ill, as he often was in early spring. In response to this poor turn of events, Koutarou was determined to catch a meal’s worth of sweetfish, since that was his brother’s favorite. Once he did so, Haruki would cheer up, Yukie and Akinori would tell Koutarou he’d done a good job, and his other brothers would all savor a big dinner after surveying the fields for the upcoming year’s planting. Everyone would be healthy and happy and no one would yell at him for skipping school, breaking some crockery they hadn’t yet realized he had broken, or being too loud in general. 

Koutarou liked to make noise. He especially enjoyed the sound of his own voice on a day when his favorite brother was ill, since it could make them both laugh. Noise also brought attention; something he desperately craved since everyone was always too busy with their work to pay attention to him.

Most importantly, there had been a time where he had not spoken up. The knowledge that he had let soldiers insult his family and father still galled him, truth distorted by the pain of the experience. His youth at the time didn’t matter. He was convinced that his voice was powerful, something he should use whenever possible. And on that day he hadn’t.

Since then, he'd learned of the samurai rebellion and what he considered his father's bravery in fighting back against the loss of their family's very existence. It confirmed in his mind the cowardice of the Imperial Army. The knowledge only fueled Koutarou’s desire to prove to himself that he wasn’t a coward, but instead a worthy son. He hated the Imperial family more than he'd ever hated anything in his life, and some day he was going to do something about it.

It wasn't particularly clear what he was going to do, but he was going to do _something_ that no one else had ever done.

As this heroic childish fantasy that involved his fathers’ katana and talking animals occupied his mind, the hours passed quickly. Before he knew it, he had five sweetfish tied to a piece of twine. He was just hauling in the sixth when everything he knew about the forest turned out to be wrong.

Sakanoshita betrayed him in a way that far surpassed any of the stories he'd heard.

It started with the sky. The best spot for fishing was a generally sunny spot by a clear-running stream, but as Koutarou brought in his catch, he was inexplicably cast into shadow. He looked up to see if rain was on the way and instead saw a rapidly descending storm cloud. It fell so quickly there was no time to react. The wet mist enveloped him, cold and clammy on his bare arms. A terrible wind blew up, chilling him to the bone and nearly knocking him over. He held tight to his fish and rod, because it felt like he was being sucked into the sky. He wasn’t about to lose the dinner he’d worked so hard for. 

When the disorienting motion finally stopped, he fell to his knees somewhere that was not a sunny rock next to his favorite stream. Under his fingers (fish and pole still clenched in each hand) he could feel soft moss. The mist blew away revealing his confused brothers all around him. Haruki seemed the worst off. Wataru was holding him up in a way that suggested the younger boy had fainted. The normally imposing Tatsuki was on his hands and knees, dry heaving, while Yamato was nervously patting his back.

Akinori was the only one standing at all. He was several paces away, directly in front of a strangely attired man that none of them had ever seen before. For the first time Koutarou could remember, his brother was wearing something other than his lazy smirk. He looked, for once, like the actual head of their family, like a real eldest brother. Someone ready to fight for them now that it was truly necessary.

Tatsuki’s gags gradually subsided, and a stunned silence fell over the clearing where they’d landed.

“I’d like to thank you all for coming, first off,” the man in front of Akinori broke the tense mood. He looked like someone who had been through many battles. Everything about his face was sharp. His eyebrows were thick and heavy angled, with a chunk missing. Even his dark hair was angular, pulled back in ridges that resembled a plowed field.

Contrasting with this harshness, he was dressed in a beautiful kimono much too light for early spring. It was possible he was wearing it because he'd spent all his money on that one piece of clothing alone. The delicate pattern of flying crows that started at the hem and soared to wrap around his neck looked like the sort of thing that cost a year’s wages.

Akinori cocked his head in lazy deliberation, “You used magic to bring us here. Why? Who are you?”

“It was like a storm!” Haruki wriggled dizzily in Wataru's arms, lips blue and eyes still not quite focused.

Koutarou nodded in eager agreement. “I didn’t know people could do that! I bet I probably could figure it out if I tried, though.” The strange man gave him the same piercing, incredulous look that his teachers, grandmother, and sister had all become very good at.

“Ah..." he scratched his head the way adults did when they felt in over their heads and as a result, annoyed. "The reason you didn’t know people could do _that_ would be because they don’t.”

He leaned to the right until his momentum spun him completely around, emerging on the other side looking very different. The crow kimono was gone, and he was dressed instead in the red pompoms and golden vestments of a yamabushi. Or sort of a yamabushi. Koutarou had only ever seen them on a few of the tamer screens that Akinori painted, so he could only trust that his brother knew what they looked like.

But he’d certainly never seen one with _enormous black wings_. Now the man’s bizarre ridged hair made sense, because it was actually a crest of shiny black feathers.

“You’re a-!” Koutarou gasped.

“I know what I am, little owl," the crow tengu interrupted him. "But let’s get down to business. Regrettably, I’m not here for a friendly chat. You see, much to what I think will be her everlasting regret, your sister,” he reached behind him and pulled Yukie out of _thin air_ , “has desecrated the forest that I’m sworn to protect.”

Tatsuki and Wataru made to rush forward, and Akinori was on the verge of grabbing the stranger by the neck, but the tengu held up his hand and they stopped where they were as though they couldn't move if they'd wanted.

“I don’t want to have to do this,” he shook his head. “Really I don’t, but unfortunately there’s one thing I can’t abide, and that’s a ruckus. So if you’ll please…”

He slammed his staff down and the musical jingle of its rings drove a wind up from the ground. Where only an instant before had stood all of Koutarou’s brothers, there was nothing but the empty shells of their collapsed clothing.

“…calm down," the tengu finished.

Koutarou was, for once, struck into silence. Wriggling free from his brothers’ clothing were five owls of varying kind and size. They behaved both like birds and people, some trying to walk like a human might, others testing out their wings or pruning their feathers. The owl that had once been Haruki, the tiniest one of all, fluttered up to rest on Koutarou’s head and nestle in his thick crest of hair. He could feel the small bird trembling. Yamato, on the other hand, was digging into the unprepared sweetfish with a relish that belied their situation.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Koutarou bellowed at the tengu, too angry to be either relieved or confused as to why he was still a person.

“Koutarou,” Yukie spoke as though she was fighting for every syllable. “Don’t.”

He did not want to listen, but there seemed to be no other option, so he drew his hands into fists and made small but virulent noises of fury.

“Bokuto-san,” the tengu crossed his arms and addressed his sister, “now we can talk. I don’t give a damn who enjoys the pleasures of the flesh in this forest, as long as they don’t cause any destruction. Trysts of all sorts have been going on for hundreds of years. No one’s caused trouble quite yet. It's probably good for the place. So make love with whoever you'd like, bring a whole party if you want! I honestly don't care."

Yukie was crying. Koutarou got to his feet, took one step, then another. She shook her head violently and he stopped, feet still itching to move.

"Unfortunately," the crow tengu drawled, stretching his enormous wings out wide, "defiling a sworn shrine maiden is a different matter.”

“I-I didn’t know…” she said weakly.

“You’re telling me,” the feathers on his head crested, “you didn’t know that Sakanoshita is a holy forest?”

“It’s a holy forest?” Koutarou demanded. “I thought it was just really quiet because the trees are so old! No wonder everybody’s scared of it!”

“You humans!” the tengu threw up his arms. “You pray and pray and leave offerings and commit idiotic suicides for the sake of love and devotion so that a place ends up as sacred as Ryujin’s whiskers, and then you just _forget about it_?”

“I beg your forgiveness,” Yukie whispered.

“I wish I could give it! This is nothing but a hassle for me. But even if I could, you can be sure that tenacious little priest at the temple would badger me for the rest of his natural life. Look, I don’t even know what to call it when two shrine maidens defile each _other_ , but since you insisted that you’d ‘do anything’ to keep your lover from punishment, I’ve done what you asked.”

He turned to Koutarou with a predatory grin. His teeth were _pointed_.

“Lucky for you, Bokuto-san you’ve got the seventh child of a seventh child as a little brother. Otherwise there’d be no way out of this. Unlucky for you, I don’t think this kid can keep his mouth shut for seven minutes, let alone the seven years required to break the curse.”

He waved his hand, and whatever had been holding Yukie back released her. She rushed to Koutarou, falling to her knees, wrapping her arms around his waist, and weeping. He knelt down to hug her back as tight as he could.

“I’m so sorry, Koutarou, I’m so, so sorry.”

He wasn’t quite sure what had even happened, but his brothers were owls, some crazy youkai was insulting him and complimenting him in the same sentence, and his unflappable sister was sobbing as though her life was over. Whatever was happening, it was bad.

The crow tengu stood up to his full height, and a rush of wind caught in his wings, ruffling the feathers on his head and streaming the ties of his vestments behind him. He slammed his staff into the ground again and the wind grew in strength until Koutarou felt Haruki’s claws digging into his hair to keep from blowing away. The rest of his brothers took to the nearby trees.

The tengu spoke, and his casual tone was gone, replaced with a voice that rang across the entire mountain and drilled through to Koutarou’s bones.

“ ** _Fallen remnants of the Bokuto family, as penalty for doubly defiling Sakanoshita Forest you are cursed to live as your namesake for the rest of your lives._** ”

Yukie's arms fell away as she shrank, lovely hair replaced with pure white feathers. Even as an owl she was beautiful, but he didn’t want that. He _needed_ her. He needed all of them.

"No no no no come back!" Koutarou yelled at her, and then to the trees at the rest of his family. "C'mon you can fight this, I know you can!"

But there was no response to be had.

The wind fell to nothing, and the sounds of the forest went back to normal.

The tengu who had steadily approached while Koutarou had been shouting, picked Yukie up and scratched her head gently before settling her on his shoulder.

“Well… relatives of your namesake,” he corrected his earlier proclamation. “I don’t think this mountain could handle six great horned owls. Which is what _you_ would have turned into if you weren’t so resistant to magic, by the way. Do you know they can kill adult foxes? And cats? I'd never hear the end of it if we suddenly had six of them. Especially since they’re not native to Japan."

He leaned down, and touched the end of his staff to the boy’s lips. He seemed almost sympathetic. "They’re all owls except for you, Bokuto Koutarou, the one who most resembles one. As I expected, the curse cannot touch you, so you alone have the power to break it.”

Koutarou was crying now, and it was embarrassing because he was no longer a child but he couldn't stop. It didn't matter. Everything was over anyway. How was he going to help them? He was worthless, he couldn’t even stop this from happening in the first place. He didn’t even know what was going on!

"How?" he sobbed, desperate for something. "I don't know any magic. Teach me! I'll learn, I promise I'll learn. I know I'm not a good student, but I’m real good at practicing till I get better! I swear I am! I’ll be the best!"

"Are you certain you really want to know? It's going to be the hardest thing you ever do."

Koutarou nodded, trying to look confident and falling just short of achieving his goal.

With another jingle of his staff, the tengu stood up and pointed towards a clearing that Koutarou hadn't noticed before.

“In that glade, past the cherry and maple tree, are stinging nettles. Thousands of them. They will grow every year, unless you rip out their roots. To see your family whole again, you must make a haori for each of your siblings out of those nettles, but only the ones you have picked with your _bare hands_.”

“But!" Koutarou grit his teeth as the tears returned. "I don’t know how to make clothes!”

“Learn, kid,” the tengu shrugged, irritated that Koutarou wasn't appreciating his kindness.  

The boy stated the next most obvious thing. "And nettles hurt bad!”

“Deal with it!” The tengu showed his teeth. “Now are you going to listen, or should I just consume their hearts _now_?”

He hadn’t even mentioned that before, and Koutarou didn’t know tengu could do that, but he wasn’t about to question. He sat up into seiza and tried to look as attentive as possible, which seemed to soothe the tengu’s pride and impatience.

“For the next seven years, you cannot make a sound. No talking, no moaning, whining, groaning or anything else you seem greatly talented at.”

“What about…?” Koutarou gestured at his posterior, sheepish but earnest. “Because, you just can’t keep that from happening, you know?”

“Are you seriously asking me that? I just turned everyone you love into owls and that's your concern?"

Koutarou nodded, not understanding how it wasn't important. It was a sound that people made regularly. He should know he slept in a room with three of his brothers.

"It's fine! Fart all day and all night if you want. I’m talking about mouth noises.”

“What about sneezing? I can't keep from sneezing or I'll die, I think. I heard it once.”

“YOU CAN SNEEZE WITHOUT MAKING A SOUND IF YOU TRY HARD ENOUGH BUT NO, INADVERTENT BODILY FUNCTIONS DO NOT COUNT.”

Koutarou nodded thoughtfully. The tengu was right actually, you could.

“Bah. I hate this curse… it’s so complicated. Anyway. Once a year, your siblings will return to their human forms. On… when were you born, kid?”

“The autumnal equinox? I’m bad at remembering the day…”

“How convenient,” the tengu grinned. “On the autumnal equinox, your family will be restored to their human forms for an hour _if_ they return to that glade with the nettles. They might not, because as time goes on, it’s going to get harder and harder for them to remember they’re not actually owls. You're probably going to be an uncle and not even know it come breeding season. But if they do return, you still can't make a sound. If that happens, for any reason or at any time, they will die immediately, with really rotten karma.”

“When does the no talking start?” Koutarou asked, wanting to mentally prepare himself by saying all the filthy words he possibly could all at once.

“Let’s just go with now.”

Koutarou flapped his mouth shut in frustrated disappointment. The tengu looked away from him, as though the sight was painful, or kind of hilarious.

"One more thing:” he said grimly, looking towards the glade. “Regardless of the state of their memories, your brothers and sister will all reassemble in the glade by sunset exactly seven years from now. If you don't finish the haori and put them on all your siblings by the time the sun disappears on that day, they will forget their humanity completely. They'll live as owls, with the same brief lifespan. You, however, will live an exceedingly long life so as to remember them."

The tengu lifted Yukie off of his shoulder and held her on the edge of his hand. "This is the worst part of the job, you know?" he told her, then tossed her high in the air. He waved his hand with a "Best of luck kid," there was a blast of wind, and he vanished.

Haruki fluttered down off of Koutarou's head, landing on the ground in front of him. He made a small yap that could have been sympathetic or scared or something in-between. Koutarou couldn't ask or even make a noise back. So he just held out his hands, and his brother hopped onto them.

With the small bundle of feathers curled to his chest, Koutarou taught himself to weep without making a single sound.

He was very good at things when he practiced, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, since I did so much research for this story, I wanted to compile some really interesting things I learned in the final notes.
> 
> Do Mika (shrine maidens) have to be virgins? At one point they did, however, over time this expectation stopped. In this story, Fukurodani is very, very rural, so the shrine is essentially functioning the way they want, which is kind of the Old Ways. And of course, the tengu is really freaking old, and he kind of has no idea what's going on, because it's only recently (in his mind) that the Buddhist and Shinto temples and shrines were separated into two different entities. 
> 
> Aren't tengus good/evil? Yes! No! About two hundred and fifty years before this story, Buddhists decided to kind of switch them over to mountain guardians and the like, but generally, they'd been monsters and evil for a lot longer than that, and viewed poorly in the public eye. Also, they were the only youkai I could find who were documented in the lore as having the power to change people into animals, instead of the other way around.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Koutarou just is crying a lot these days.

It would be logical to assume that the remains of the first day were the most difficult of all of the thousands of days that were to follow, but that was not what happened. Indeed as with most sorrows, there is a process of grieving that follows a path from which it is difficult for any individual to stray far. And the first step on this path is almost always denial. In this situation, it was denial over the sheer impossibility of breaking the curse.

To put it plainly, Koutarou was weeping because his family was gone. But though he already missed them and the thought brought him boundless grief, he also believed that he could break the curse with little difficulty.

The youngest Bokuto was not generally considered to be a clever child. Talented at a few minor things like fishing, perhaps. Passionate unquestionably: he was eager to the point of obnoxiousness and seemed to learn impossible things out of sheer spite. But overall almost anyone who knew the boy would acknowledge that he needed a handler. If all of Fukurodani had been been presented with the true reality of the Bokuto family’s curse, they would have said one thing, without hesitation.

“Those poor children are going to die.”

It was a blessing that they were not informed, because Koutarou could have at some point heard their reactions, which might then have doomed everyone. He was, at his core, a very sensitive young man, and prone to bouts of devastation from the most minor instigation. At times of great stress, he tended to react in one of two ways. Both reactions were highly dependent on his mental state, so his family tried to avoid exposing him to discouragement if at all possible. Regardless, when difficult times arose, most frequently, Koutarou fell first into misery and then paralysis. However, there were instances when the boy met challenges head on, rising to the occasion in ways that exceeded anyone’s wildest expectations.

The latter only ever took place when the misfortune was so extreme that all hope seemed lost. For instance, two winters prior, Haruki had gone from his normal state of persistent hacking coughs, to desperately shuddering for every breath. The village doctor required the bulb of a certain forest lily to relax the boy's lungs, but the snow had fallen unseasonably deep. Discovering a wilted plant and then digging up its roots from the frozen ground was a futile venture. But that night when Koutarou’s brothers had returned home, hair frozen, eyes downcast, and hands empty, the young boy had crept away to the forest himself. He’d returned at dawn with blackened mittens, burned fingers, and singed hair, all on top of a terrible cold. But more importantly he’d been brandishing a fistful of bulbs - well more than any one patient could consume in a lifetime. 

The current situation though less immediately urgent was infinitely more dire, which, strangely enough, boded well for everyone’s future. Unfortunately, the challenge was much, much longer in duration, and Koutarou was alone with no one to build up his sensitive heart. This countered the difficulty, and left the likelihood of success and failure balanced, favoring just a bit on the side of defeat.

Fortunately, Koutarou was not thinking of those things.

It seemed at first that his silent weeping would last forever, but after time – minutes, hours, it was hard to say – he had no more tears to cry. At some point during his mourning, Haruki had wiggled his way free of Koutarou’s embrace to flutter to his brother’s shoulder. Since then, the tiny owl had been gently pulling at his hair, likely because he was able to do little else.

When Koutarou wiped the mess from his swollen eyes, he realized that all of his other siblings had flown away. Why? Were they angry with him? Had they already forgotten they were people? The considerations were so overwhelming that he wanted nothing more than to be left alone in the forest to rot. He made a clumsy gesture to his remaining brother, trying to indicate that he should fly away too, but Haruki just yanked at his hair much harder than before.

Koutarou already felt like he was going to explode if he didn’t say _something_ , so he started lightly gnawing on his own tongue. With nothing else to be done, he breathed out what he could of his sadness then slung his siblings’ discarded clothing over his fishing pole, gathered their sandals in his arms and carried everything toward the glade. They’d need the clothes on his birthday when they reappeared, probably. 

Or maybe they’d be owl enough to not want clothes anymore.

He’d explored the forest extensively for most of his life, and he was quite familiar with the clearing where the crow tengu had cursed them. But this glade was something entirely new. It just hadn’t been there the last time he’d picked wild plums. It was almost as though someone had pushed the cleared forest through a weak point in the underbrush, creating a glade that hadn’t been there before. It seemed fantastical beyond consideration.

But then, Haruki was a stunted short-eared owl who was sitting on his shoulder, so Koutarou didn’t really know what to think.

The two trees, sakura and maple, had been there before, at least. They stood two carts’ widths apart, bare branches reaching towards each other till their very tips intertwined. He’d noticed last year when they were fully in leaf that they vaguely resembled two people about to embrace. Now the sakura was dotted with tight pink buds, and the maple was just unfurling its deep red new leaves, making the resemblance even more obvious. And instead of a frame that showcased a patch of brambles and densely packed trees, they were now a gate to a brilliant green swath of moss and grass, early spring flowers, and several old plum trees. This glade was edged on one side by a truly enormous quantity of sprouted nettles next to a well. On the other was a singing stream, a fair-sized pond, and most bafflingly of all, a gingko shading a small house that looked like it had just been built.

The structure was nearly the source of utter disaster, because Koutarou came very close to calling out to announce his arrival. He’d taken the deep breath and his mouth was shaped to form the words, when Haruki nipped his ear hard enough to draw blood. After a deep exhale (gasps seemed to be okay since they were just _breathing_ ) Koutarou glanced apologetically at his brother who made a number of hoarse yapping sounds that he correctly interpreted as scolding. A series of severe blinks drove away the tears of frustration that hovered in the corners of Koutarou’s eyes – he couldn’t even _apologize_ for nearly killing them.

With nothing else to do but move forward, he marched past the two trees, feeling a frisson run down his spine as he did so. Generally possessing both utter obliviousness and unnatural perception, Koutarou experienced the eerie sensation, but made no real note of it. He approached the house first, because he planned on staying in the glade until every last haori was done. Though not brilliant, he had more wits about him than he was given credit for. If he returned without his siblings and unable to speak up in his own defense, he knew that Fukurodani would take him for a kinslaying murderer, raving mad, or most likely both. They were already suspicious of him because of his strange eyes and hair. And Haruki. And his mother.

If there truly was no one living in the small house, then Koutarou was going to move in. And then he would get down to business, and finish his task before the New Year.

The boy was also known for his overconfidence.

The porch that surrounded the building was in good condition. It looked freshly joined, in fact, but it was also filthy: covered in a thick layer of dirt, leaves, and the carcasses of birds and small animals in every possible level of decay. It appeared that no one had entered the house in a very long time.

When he slid the door open, it was abundantly clear just by the smell that the inside of the house was almost as bad. Flying squirrels, rats, or any other number of creatures had found their way in and left their droppings and food scraps everywhere. But once again, the interior of the house looked as though it had just been built, at least, to Koutarou’s understanding of houses. The paper screens were completely undamaged despite the filth. It was small, with just a living area and a room for sleeping, but more than enough for a single boy.

And in the far corner, there was a broom.

The hovering gloom lifted even higher and Koutarou nodded his head so much that Haruki jumped off of his shoulder and fluttered onto a branch of the gingko tree. Picking up the broom, he began to sweep until there was nothing left to clean.

It was mid afternoon when he finished, opening all of the sliding doors and windows of the house to let it air out. There was already cobweb-covered firewood stacked underneath the structure, so he’d have something to keep warm when night fell. Tipping his head up and down and snapping his fingers to express his good mood the only way he was able, he approached the pond and stream to see about something to eat. Scant minutes had passed when he had two sweetfish, one for himself, and one for his brother, who was taking a nap in a deep knot in the gingko tree.

Once again, he nearly ruined everything by yelling at Haruki to wake and eat the wonderful fish his talented brother had caught, but this time he remembered himself before he actually spoke. Conflicting emotions of pride and disappointment struggled for control of his heart. After quite a tussle, Koutarou made the conscious decision to feel pleased with himself. Not making a sound would be hard for anyone, and he had gone without making one for hours! There was no question he was going to save his family, and in a fraction of the time he’d been given.

He flung a stone so that it knocked right next to Haruki’s hollow. At the noise, his brother opened one eye in a sleepy glare. But he couldn’t be budged, even when Koutarou waved the fish, so he threw it into the nearby branches and hoped that he'd eat it eventually. It wasn’t clear quite how much he had to take care of Haruki anymore. The coughing and wasting disease that had plagued his brother as long as Koutarou could remember seemed to have quieted. Other than being much smaller than a normal short eared owl, Haruki seemed perfectly healthy. He hadn’t coughed or shivered or fainted since he’d been transformed.

Granted, it had only been a few hours, but Koutarou could not remember a fifteen-minute stretch with Haruki that hadn’t been interrupted by the sound of his hacking coughs.

Nevertheless, even if the curse had healed his brother and he was now just as self-sufficient as his other siblings, Koutarou hoped that Haruki wouldn’t fly off. He already felt disconnected from himself; as though being unable to talk out loud had cut him off from his own ideas. He needed _someone_ around.

Foregoing the hearth, he instead cooked his fish over a small fire of scattered branches. Gnawing the last of the finished product right off the stick. he approached the small patch of stinging nettles like an inevitable conqueror. It couldn’t be _that bad_. They were so small! He’d just pick as many as he could at once and deal with the pain. The ones he picked would dry out, and whatever it was that stung him wouldn’t be a problem when he turned them into cloth.

This brilliant plan was set in his head when he dove in with all of the enthusiasm he could muster.

Five minutes later, covered with a burning rash from his head to his toes, he threw himself, fully clothed, into the frigid pond.

Biting his hand to keep from screaming had left searing hives in his mouth.

 

After such a preventable nightmare he wept again, only this time Haruki was still asleep, so Koutarou was completely and utterly alone. Considerably more dehydrated than he had been, the tears were even less sustainable, and for some time, he simply sat, head on his knees in silent, bleak despair. Eventually he stripped off all of his muddy, soaked clothing, and shivered in his fundoshi. That was also muddy and soaked but he didn’t have another, and he was unwilling to put on one of his brothers’ or sit around naked.

He had no idea what to do.

The crushing reality of his task had fully settled on his shoulders as he looked at his burning, hive-swollen hands. He had no idea how to pick nettles without his fingers becoming unusable for hours, maybe an entire day. If by chance he figured that out, he had no idea where to even start gathering usable fiber (a word he did not even know) from the leaves or stems. And even if he somehow worked out how to do that, he still had no idea how to spin those fibers into yarn. If by some miracle, he made yarn, what was he to do with it? Weaving was out of the question - he knew how much equipment it took and he had no chance to assemble it in such little time. When he had been very, very young he'd watched his father knit their tabi, and could, perhaps with a great deal of practice, do that.

But that was the only task he had even the remotest chance of completing without help.

If he could make a single haori in a year, he’d be extremely lucky. Koutarou fell onto his back, smothering the groan he desperately wanted to let out when his shoulders hit the moss. The sloppy wet pile of his dirty kimono, tabi, and rough under layers highlighted the fact that if he was to live in Sakanoshita, he was going to need clothing.

Seven years’ worth of clothing in sizes that he could grow into. Other than Haruki, all of his brothers were quite tall. By both his childhood memory and village recollection, his father had been enormous. Koutarou had been oversized since birth, and he was unlikely to stop this trend on the cusp of puberty. 

On top of that, he'd need blankets, a futon, a knife, a lamp, wicks, oil, candles, and really an enormous number of other things to just not die. It was strange, realizing how much he depended on civilization, despite once thinking he could survive in the forest.

Over the next few days, as early as the next morning, Fukurodani would begin to note his entire family’s disappearance. He expected that the villagers would keep watch over his home out of curiosity and a desire to help for awhile. After some amount of time (he had no idea how long, since no family had ever disappeared before that he could remember), they would contact his distant relatives, and the Bokuto family's belongings would be redistributed and their lands sold. It was necessary for him to get what he needed before then.

Koutarou grabbed his wet clothes and laid them out on the sunny part of porch to dry, then turned to survey his brothers’ clothing.

The problem was that even though kimono were very loose and forgiving, the differences in size amongst his brothers were just too dramatic. Haruki, who was the closest in age, was quite a bit smaller, while the rest of his brothers, who had already experienced a great deal of growing into manhood, were all quite a bit larger. Yukie had been wearing her shrine attire, and though her vestments were about the perfect size, Koutarou could not sneak into Fukurodani dressed like a shrine maiden. Though he did take her dark handkerchief to wrap around his very noticeable hair. He settled for Yamato’s kimono and underlayers in the end. He girded the hem around his legs so that it didn’t drag on the ground and he could move faster.

Koutarou took the rest of his family’s clothing and put it into the house in case of a sudden rain, then set out through the tree gate and across the clearing. The walk to the village took two hours, and he’d just make it by dusk.

And darkness was good when you planned to rob your own home.

 

His elaborate plan for deception didn’t seem to matter, because when he arrived at the village it was completely empty. At first he was concerned, thinking that perhaps the tengu had cursed _everyone_. Sticking to the quiet hidden places that he and Haruki had often used to dodge their teachers, he snuck past the houses and other buildings, emerging on the other side to hear the distant murmur of celebration.

It had completely slipped his mind that the blossom-viewing festival was that evening. Held under the wide swath of plum trees at the far end of their valley, the rowdy goings-on would keep everyone out of sight for awhile. The day thus far had been such a confusing mix of windfalls and setbacks that Koutarou didn’t really know how to react anymore. Normally when he felt like this he’d tell someone, but there was no one to tell and no words to use even if there had been.

Sneaking back the way he came, more because it was fun than because he felt he’d be spotted, he stepped on the long tail of the black tomcat that always sat in the open schoolroom door. It was easy to recognize: at one point someone must have kicked it or something. It had a lopsided mouth, and the hackles on one side of its head were always raised, giving it a strange crest of fur that nearly drooped over its eye. He'd called it Blacktail, rather uncreatively. 

The instant the boy's foot touched the ground, the cat made a tremendous yowl that sounded more like a person yelling than an animal. Koutarou fell to his knees and bowed apologetically even though it was just a cat. Having spent a huge part of the day in either emotional or physical agony (his skin still stung), and with his entire family now birds, he really didn't want to hurt anything else because who even knew anymore what was really an animal? He'd given this particular cats lots of mackerel (which Koutarou hated) in the past, so he hoped it would forgive him.

His bowing and scraping seemed to work, because when he stood up the large cat made several loops around his feet, the heavy rumbles of its purring vibrating up Koutarou's shins. But as soon as he made to pet him, the cat darted away in the direction Koutarou was headed, looking over its shoulder as though it wanted to be followed.

Since he had planned on going that way anyway, Koutarou kept on going, wishing he could talk to the stupid cat and ask what it was trying to do, exactly. He didn’t have high expectations other than “strange cat things,” so the desire was formed more out of loneliness than anything. It hadn’t even been a whole day without his family, yet he was already feeing dejected because he couldn’t talk at cats. 

The long-tailed cat continued on when he saw that Koutarou was behind him, then made a sharp turn and jumped onto the porch of a nearby house. Now that the sky had darkened considerably, it was clear that the home’s doors were open and lamps were lit, indicating someone was home. Koutarou felt nervous of discovery until he realized whose home it was – the Suzumeda family’s. The person at home was likely their ancient grandmother whose mind had long gone. The house was also the home of Kaori-san, Yukie’s best friend and the only other shrine maiden in the village.

The confusing reason behind his family’s curse became clear when Koutarou came to the realization that “two shrine maidens defiling each other” had to include Kaori-san. And the only way he knew for someone _else_ to defile a shrine maiden was to take away her virginity, although that wasn’t so much of a deal as it had once…

 _Oh_.

What little Koutarou understood of sex came from two sources. The first, and much more reliable, was the behavior of animals. They mated to produce young and since he spent most of his time in the forest he had caught a glimpse of the activity from time to time. He knew what went where, so to speak, and he knew the result of a successful attempt was babies. It was obvious enough that the same was true for people, though he wouldn’t have gotten that from Akinori’s smug description, complete with disturbing illustrations.

Because people, who were the other source of information, were much less upfront about the process. Boys in the village told stories about conquests that Koutarou was certain they hadn’t had, mostly because Haruki had pointed out that the general plot was always very nearly the same. Akinori had made no sense whatsoever, other than the part about “pulling out unless he wanted to have to deal with some bastard.” And of course there were more legendary stories, that they’d all heard, about samurai and their pupils, which provided him with some details that he didn’t expect he’d ever need. The only piece of information that humans offered that was of any use was that apparently sex was very pleasurable.

He could have found _that_ out by touching himself, something that he was starting to do pretty regularly. 

But through all of this, he had no idea how two _women_ could have sex, because every single story involved at least one man, as though pleasure was only something men enjoyed. Luckily he didn’t want to know, particularly because unlike Haruki and the other young village boys, he could care less about what girls did. It seemed private, anyway, and whatever had happened, he knew that Yukie felt terrible about the results. Though if Kaori-san wasn’t trying to raise the village to help, then maybe part of the curse was that she had forgotten them?

The idea made him really sad.

There was no point in dwelling on it. The cat was still peering at him from the porch; its angular yellow eyes looking almost impatient. It gave a low, lazy meow and Koutarou shuffled forward to peek through the open screens without being seen himself.

Suzumeda-san was kneeling, leaning back against a rough wooden support that one of the village men had made for her when it became hard to stay up. In the lamplight, her wrinkled face looked like a dried up riverbed, and the thick white films over her eyes made her seem a bit less than human. But Koutarou was so caught up in this spiritual nonsense now that he knew she was just old, and her eyes were worn out.

She was singing to herself. Even though people insisted she was crazy, with a mind that still insisted the Shogun was in charge and her husband and three eldest children were alive, Koutarou thought she sounded nice. He tipped his head back and forth in time with her singing, and was very close to humming himself, until the cat meowed at him again, like it knew somehow. It approached the old woman, its long tail dancing up until it almost touched her fingers.

It was then that Koutarou realized what she was doing. Propped up against the nearest wall were dozens of dried hemp stalks. He was used to seeing them around, and he knew that the women used them to make everyday clothing, but he’d never actually taken any time to watch that process, especially since it wasn't a task that Yukie or his grandmother had ever done at home. But Suzumeda-san could do it even without the help of her eyes or recent memories.

First she cracked the stalk with her knobby fingers, revealing the fibrous outer layer and the pithy insides. She pulled the fibers away from the pith in smooth, confident strokes, then hung the messy, uneven strands over a wooden stand with a hollow cut into the top. The pith, she tossed into a basket. Over and over she did this, so quickly that she went through all of the hemp stalks before Koutarou even thought to leave. He watched her move on: scraping the fibers against a dull knife until only long shiny strands remained then wrapping the strands around a paddle that she stuck in her obi. She drew the fine fibers into a line, then spun them around a small top until the bottom was wrapped in shiny yarn.

The cat looked up at him and meowed again, even louder this time.

Koutarou could have sworn it was grinning.

 

 

If his brothers and sister had been safe at home, the first thing they would have said when he slid open their door was “Stop squawking, Koutarou!” or “Your eyes are going to fall out of your head if you keep them open like that.” But as it was, he couldn’t squawk – only jump excitedly around in tabi that were too big for him until his feet slipped and he landed on his backside.

 _I know how to save them!_ he silently breathed to the ceiling. He knew how to turn nettles into thread! He just needed the right tools. A dull knife he could get. He could probably build a little stand to drape the fibers over. It was just the last piece, the little top, that he had to find. Or make.

He rolled to his shoulders and then sprung off his hands to his feet, slipping and almost falling for a second time. The light was almost gone and soon the village would be coming home. They couldn’t find him raiding his own house so he had to move fast.

Grabbing one of the enormous carrying baskets that his brothers used to haul rice across the mountain and bolts of silk back, he began to fill it with everything he could think of. He started with his pillow, futon, and thickest blanket. He rolled them so tightly they felt like more of a rock than something to sleep on. Then he safely stowed the seeds they had set aside for their garden, dried fish, several jars of pickled vegetables, spices he didn’t know how to use, chopsticks, cups, two pots, a knife for cooking, a whetstone, fishhooks and line, and all the rice it seemed feasible to carry. He packed as many of his older brother’s kimono, hakama, and tabi as he could, as well as an ample number of fundoshi. He took two thick coats and pairs of boots and mittens –  Yamato’s and Tatsuku’s – hoping they would be enough.

He picked up the basket and, though it was profoundly heavy already, decided he could probably fit in a few more things. So instead of bringing more rice, or dried pear wood for the hearth, he found himself opening the trunk that held the few remaining items that had belonged to his parents. 

At the very top was a schoolbook illustrating hundreds of kanji, brushes, ink, and bound paper. Since Koutarou’s only way to communicate now was by writing, he took them in the off chance that it could be helpful, though he doubted he’d use any of it since anything he needed to say he could say with hiragana. Underneath the book was some clothing of his father’s that he took as well. When he pulled the fabric away, he discovered a top, very similar to the one Suzumeda-san had been using, right next to several sets of knitting needles.

Punching the air three times, he gathered everything up, including the sword oil and daisho that he'd been hiding under their house for years. With strength few realized he possessed, he hefted the backbreaking load onto his shoulders and made his way back into the forest, unseen by anyone but the black cat.

 

 

"No but listen! He's one of those cursed owls!"

The out-of-place chattering of a bright young voice dragged Koutarou out of his fitful sleep. Or maybe he was still dreaming a very uncomfortable dream where people were talking about him and every muscle in his body was screaming.

It was hard to say how he'd made it back to the glade, stumbling through cold miles of thick, dark forest with a load much heavier than he could carry. But somehow he had. He could feel the straps of the basket still wrapped around his shoulders - he'd passed out before he'd even had a chance to slide them off. His cheek was plastered against the wood of the porch, and his entire body was shivering with cold.

"Does he look like an owl to you, dummy?" another young voice snapped. It was much grimmer than the first, but still the voice of a child.

"No, but he was the one who didn't turn! You heard what that scary tengu said!"

"Of course I heard, that's why my flock flew off early and left me here! I'm going to die now thanks to those chick-eating yellow-eyes."

"Why didn't they stay and fight, though? I thought crows _always_ fought owls?"

"Do you think they told me? No, they just flew off! It’s not like I can catch up and ask!" 

"Your flock sound like a bunch of jerks. Unless you're just not very likable..."

"I'm going to peck out your eyes, you runty little fox!"

This was not a dream. Koutarou's eyes flickered open just in time to see a young boy with angry blue eyes and raven hair dig his teeth into the shoulder of an even smaller boy with hair the color of a red fox. They were scuffling on the edge of the porch, where they must have been staring at him.

He stared back, because the fox-haired boy had large pointed ears peeking out from his crown, while the black hair of the other boy had an iridescence only seen on feathers.

"He sees us! Kageyama, he sees us!" the fox boy squeaked, his eyes huge with fear.

Koutarou opened his mouth to say hello, when a furious nip at his ear reminded him to keep his lips closed. Haruki sleepily squawked at him, then returned to his hollow, while the two small boys nervously followed his flight with their eyes.

It was profoundly difficult to lift his exhausted arm in a wave, but Koutarou did, unable to hide his wide smile of delight. Whoever these strange children were, he wasn't _alone_.

"But Kageyama, he can _see_ us," the fox-haired boy stage whispered, showing wide brown eyes full of terror. "And hear us! Hear us talking! We're doomed, you've got to hide me!"

"Idiot Hinata!" the taller boy squawked, trying to fight off his clamoring companion. "I’m smaller than you are!"

"Oh... yeah. But not in this form! You’re bigger like this!"

They were spirits. And Koutarou could see them.

He didn't know how to tell the two that he wasn't going to hurt them without using words, but he waved his arms as disarmingly as he could before rolling out of the basket's straps and rubbing his sore shoulders. He wanted to groan, but he just bit his lip instead

"W-w-what's wrong with you, _Owlhead_?” the redhead nervously taunted. “Why won't you talk to us? Is it because you're going to eat us like your brother ate my mother?"

Koutarou turned, a look of horror on his face. Tatsuki had been huge. He could have definitely killed a fox if he wanted, though he probably couldn’t eat it. But why? Was he already completely an owl?

“He feels bad,” the other boy, Kageyama, announced.

On his hands and knees, the fox boy scampered across the porch, until he was just out of reach. “Do _you_ eat foxes?” he asked in a voice that was more adorable than menacing. “Because I will fight you, I don't care if you're an owl spirit.” 

He got a violent head shake in response. Koutarou was most definitely _not_ an owl spirit. In fact, it was impossible to turn him into an owl at all.

“He can’t talk or they all die,” the raven boy reminded them all, as though Koutarou had forgotten.

“ _Oh_!” the fox boy, Hinata, turned and scampered back, running like a toddler and animal all at once. “But doesn’t that mean he can’t talk with his big flock down in the valley?”

Kageyama shrugged, “He just doesn’t want those owl people to die, I guess.”

Hinata sat down and dangled his feet off the edge of the porch and let out a small confused sigh.

“Why don’t humans understand that everything dies and it’s not a huge deal?”

The iridescent-haired boy pulled up a worm out of the grown and slurped it down. “Dunno.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So stinging nettles are kind of crazy. They have all kinds of health value, theoretically, and a lot of people eat their leaves. The problem is, the plants are covered with tiny spines that get into your skin and, to me, feel like your skin is being burned off. Skin in the affected area gets swollen, there can be hives, its' a real hot mess. However, you most absolutely can make fabric out of them, and if you check out youtube there's a video of a middle aged man doing it in his backyard. 
> 
> Also, there is a definite recorded history of samurai knitting their socks (tabi). I found a ukiyo-e painting of it, but of course I can't find it now.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which Koutarou is not as good at the wilderness as he seems.
> 
> also, there's a bit of vomiting in this chapter.

The remainder of the first year could be categorized as a very dangerous learning experience. Koutarou, though he was quite familiar with the forest, was unfamiliar with living there, completely cut off from civilization. He nearly died about thirty times when he wasn’t paying attention, but it was the long term errors he made that were the most dangerous

The biggest of these was skipping vegetable and rice cultivation. 

Instead Koutarou's entire spring and summer had been spent in two ways: spying on the villagers as they cultivated hemp and spying on the women as they spun yarn and knit tabi, scarves, and other such things. Since old Suzumeda-san was most often alone, not to mention blind, he’d gone to see her most frequently, often sitting with the black cat purring in his lap. From his hiding place he would often hear Kaori-san arguing with her mother as they returned from the fields. Through this eavesdropping, it was confirmed: Kaori’s memory of Koutarou’s sister had vanished, and the whole village was questioning her sanity.

Sometimes Koutarou wished that he couldn’t remember either.

But he slowly learned to knit, unraveling and knitting Haruki’s tabi over and over. There were many things about the process of making such a sturdy sock that he could not see in the abstract, so he had to experiment until he got it right. But he liked the rhythm of knitting, the same kind of patterns he saw in plants, in the way fish moved in the water, and in the complexity of numbers, the only series of lessons he had found interesting in school.

By midsummer, he was a _terrible_ knitter, but he was a knitter. Spinning practice was a bit more difficult, as he had nothing to spin as of yet. But he figured he understood the process well enough to try.

Unfortunately, he’d neglected to plant anything, a mistake he’d come to regret.

All this time, Koutarou had company, for better or for worse. The orphaned animal spirits bickered among themselves constantly, and had no sense of personal space. They insulted Haruki whenever they saw him, although he wasn’t big enough to cause them any harm, even in their animal forms. But they were cute and Koutarou had always really liked small children. It was nice to feel like he wasn't completely alone, a thought that regularly left him crying himself to sleep at night. But because he couldn’t talk, the spirits treated him more like a beloved pet than a person, most often by speaking about him as though he weren’t there.

“Why is he still doing that?” Hinata demanded, outraged as he watched Koutarou cut down stalk after stalk of mature stinging nettles. “They hurt really bad and he doesn’t even have any fur to keep the sting off.”

“Dunno,” Kageyama answered, fluttering down from the maple tree, his favorite, and shifting from crow to boy in a smooth, organic motion. “Maybe he hates plants. And himself.”

Koutarou glared at them over his shoulder, trying to keep his hands from trembling as he clutched the stalks of the last nettles of the late summer.

There were a lot of things to say, mostly begging for some help. But he didn’t have words and – well, he didn’t really figure those two would be much help even if he did.

He’d nearly reached his limit. His throbbing fingers wouldn’t bend to grasp the stems as he cut them, and even with wraps around his arms, the repetitive motions revealed gaps where the leaves streamed across his skin like brands. The tall stems hit him in the face no matter how careful he was, and one of his eyes was swollen shut. Worst of all, he’d already picked an enormous portion of the nearby dock leaves. He couldn't pick any more in fear that they wouldn’t grow back next year.

That meant there was absolutely nothing to soothe his skin.

Pulling off the band of cloth that held his hair out of his eyes, Koutarou gagged himself with it. It tasted like sweat and as tears streamed down his cheeks soaking the material, the taste of salt grew stronger.

But he silently stripped the leaves from the stalks with his swollen, blistered fingers anyway.  

“Do humans hurt themselves on purpose?” Hinata mused as Koutarou finished and once more threw himself into the pond. Though this time he had the sense to take off his hakama and under kimono first.

“Looks like it,” Kageyama responded, watching the boy pull himself out of the water and punch the ground again and again and again as an outlet for his pain, a look of agony carved across his features.

That night, Koutarou was feverish, and in too much pain to eat, despite the well-meant gifts of mice, seeds, and rotting squirrels that mysteriously appeared next to his pillow.

It goes without saying that his sleep was replaced with delirious, but silent, weeping, followed by a week of horrific itching.

But twelve-year-old Bokuto Koutarou harvested a bumper crop of stinging nettles with his two bare hands.

 

 

He woke up before the sun on his birthday, surrounded by the clothes of his brothers and sister, all washed and folded in piles as precise as he could get them. Which unfortunately wasn’t very precise, but he had no idea how to produce the tight folds Akinori made when he had packed his hand-painted kimono to be shipped to Kyoto. Even with hours of practice, the skill evaded his younger brother who was, quite plainly, never going to grow into the sort of man who could fold clothes neatly.

Despite not being much of a planner, today was the day Koutarou had rehearsed over in his head for months.

He had no idea when they would arrive, or even where in the glade they would land, but the idea of missing them because of some mundane task meant he was going to spend the entire day on or near the porch of his house, which had the best view. Haruki was sleeping in his tree, though the previous night he had pecked at Koutarou’s feet incessantly like he was trying to make up for the past six months without the two of them getting on each other’s nerves

There were minor tasks the young boy could do without leaving his vantage point, like chopping pear wood so it could dry for the winter, but the biggest task, the one that would free his family, had to wait. The nettle stalks were still drying, and until they were properly ready he couldn't do anything else.

So he sat on the porch, kicking his legs and using up valuable paper writing about what he’d been up to for the past six months, since he couldn’t tell them any other way. He mentioned Hinata and Kageyama, who had been hiding all day for some reason, the cat who had helped him learn to spin, and how he’d learned to take care of himself.

He tried to leave out how sad and lonely he’d been as much as he could, not because he didn’t want to talk about it. He very, very, very much wanted to talk about it. But because he wanted them to spend their time as humans being happy. 

It was dusk when Wataru arrived. His species looked more like a hawk than an owl, with dark bands framing his face, and brown bars across his breast and belly. He dove at the ground in the center of the glade, and the instant his talons touched, the tengu’s residual wind magic flowed from the ground. That was what got Koutarou’s attention. He could see quite well in the dark, but he’d been nodding off after his day of extended boredom. It was the wind, and Haruki’s loud cries that made him realize he’d missed the owl’s arrival. And then, Wataru was there, very much naked, with a patchy moustache and hair longer than Koutarou had ever seen him wear.

Forgetting anything about the clothes he’d prepared, Koutarou jumped off the porch, his feet pumping before they hit the ground. He jumped on Wataru’s back, tears streaming down his face and dribbling against his brother’s skin.

“H-hey, Koutarou,” his brother said with a nervous laugh. “Missed you too.”

The sound of Haruki’s scream of delight unraveled Koutarou from Wataru’s back.

Haruki was _taller_. His hair was shaggy, and he had the faintest darkness on his upper lip. But most importantly, he was doing cartwheel after cartwheel on the lawn.

“I CAN BREATHE!” he shouted, his voice sounding older and stronger. “Kou, _KOU_ I can breathe! I’m better and you did it! You did it, you didn’t talk for _so long_!”

Koutarou was bowled over, and Haruki was on top of him, naked and laughing into his neck as he violently ruffled his hair.

Owls were silent as they landed, so they didn’t notice Yamato’s arrival until he chuckled and asked, “So, we’re going to do this family reunion naked then?”

Jolting at the realization that he had clothes for them Koutarou effortlessly lifted Haruki off of him and ran back to the porch, grabbing all the yukatas. Fundoshi were pointless, there just wasn’t enough time.

“Is it just me, or did he get even stronger?” Yamato leaned over to ask Wataru. Their youngest brother raced back, handing them their old clothing just as another sudden updraft announced the arrival of Tatsuki. Koutarou couldn’t even give him a yukata before strong hands were squeezing his shoulders, and Tatsuki was telling him, “You did well.”

Koutarou nodded, staring wide-eyed at his imposing older brother’s full beard.

Akinori and Yukie landed together, though only Yukie’s white feathers could be seen in the dying light. Everyone turned around and Koutarou tried to hold out her clothing without peeking, but he accidentally dropped it on her head.

“Okay then, boys,” she said with a slow smile once she was dressed, “why don’t we catch up?”

 

 

“Ow! Aniki have you ever even cut hair before?” Haruki whined.

Akinori smirked just a little wider, “Not with a knife made to kill people, and certainly not this quickly, scrawny.” Haruki huffed angrily at being called that, but he held still, head leaning a little over the porch so there was less mess.

Next to them Yamato gingerly ran his hands over the cloud of his hair that was growing outwards rather than down. The look on his face said maybe he’d just grow it out. Tatsuki had shaved with the other wakizashi, and then shaved Wataru’s head for him. Both he and Akinori left their hair long.

“Do you want a haircut, Koutarou?” Akinori asked, attacking Yamato’s curls whether he wanted him to or not.

He shook his head vigorously. He’d actually come to like the length of his hair, it’s texture made it stand up like Tatsuki’s did, and the longer it was the easier it was to keep out of his eyes. Also, he hadn’t really expected that the first time he’d gotten to interact with people, they’d spend most of that time cutting their hair, or in Yukie’s case, looking through his supplies. They hadn’t even read the letter he’d written! And since he couldn’t speak, they only seemed to want to ask him questions that he could answer with a yes or no.

As though he was an idiot. Koutarou was hardly brilliant, even when he could speak, but he did still have control of his own senses now that he was silent.

Yukie rushed out of the house, her yukata haphazardly tied, and a look of urgency on her normally placid face, “Koutarou, um, I believe we have a bit of a problem.”

Yamato cleared his throat, “Not sure if you noticed, sister-dear, but we’re going to turn back into owls in about a half hour. What exactly–”

“He doesn’t have enough fooooood,” she sang, effectively cutting her brother off. “I was going to make us a small meal, so that we could eat together for his birthday while we read his letter but we can’t eat a single bite or he will starve.”

Koutarou’s jaw dropped. Behind him, his brothers mumbled urgent, confusing things, including Yamato’s despair at being denied human food for another year. 

Tatsuki stood up and grabbed Koutarou’s arm, and a lantern.

“We’ll be back,” he grunted. “Get that letter ready.”

He drug them both off the porch and down to the pond, holding the lantern low over the plants as he stepped into the water.

“Duck potatoes,” he pointed at a plant with arrow-shaped leaves. “In a few weeks, kick up the mud around their roots. Little tubers will float up. Good eating. Gather as much as you can, they’ll keep.”

He pointed again this time at a water lily, “Dig up the roots, cut them and boil them. You can eat those too. Turtles and fish are sleeping under the ice in winter. Fish for them if you’re desperate, but remember, if you freeze to death it doesn’t matter if you have food. If you run out of food, eat anything Haruki brings you, no matter how disgusting. I’d stay but I’m not myself enough to remember.”

Koutarou nodded, wanting to fly out from under his skin. He couldn’t agree. He couldn’t apologize, he couldn’t say that he was scared, it was too dark to write in the dirt and the paper he had left was for emergencies. Inside he was screaming but all he could do was clench his fists.

“This is really hard,” Tatsuki’s strong hand grabbed his shoulder. “I don’t know if any of us could do it but you.”

He was probably lying but Koutarou believed him anyway.

 

**I’ve missed you all so much!**

Yukie’s voice was cracking as she read what Koutarou had tried so hard to make into a cheerful letter.

**I get lonely a lot without you. But usually Haruki is around to nip at me until I go do something. But the glade is pretty. And I learned to take care of myself pretty quick. I miss people. I miss school, even. I have adventures every day, though! I don’t know, I think… there are animal spirits here, and they talk to me. They are brats, and they look like little kids most of the time. So either this is in the spirit world, or maybe, I’m a spirit person? People walk by this glade sometimes, but I don’t think they can see me. I hope you all can. I don’t know, I’m bad at writing so it’s hard to say but maybe I’m not a person, really. That tengu said I was special, but when you can’t talk to anybody, it’s hard to feel like you’re real.**

**Anyway, the glade is really pretty. And picking nettles… well, it’s no fun. But I know I can do it, just you wait, I learned how to spin and taught myself to knit and maybe when you’re humans again I can help and not be a pain. I promise you will be humans again. Because you’re the best family and I’m so…**

“Koutarou,” Yukie’s voice was a trembling whisper, “you’re most certainly–”

But she was cut off by a rush of wind that caught Wataru and threw him off the porch.

“And… here we go,” Yamato groaned.

In the darkness, rapid turning winds were spinning their brother around, flinging off his clothing and leaving his owl form behind. 

“Oh, I guess we turn back in the order we turned,” Haruki waved a cheerful goodbye. “Don’t worry little brother, I’m just going back to my tree.” When the wind rose up to take him, he jumped, backflipping off the porch into the air.

Yamato sat up from his lounging position and gave a forlorn look into the kitchen, where Yukie had prepared Koutarou’s dinner. “Remember, you’re eating for seven, buddy,” he said, just before he was swept away.

“Don’t forget what I told you,” Tatsuki grabbed Koutarou’s shoulder again, his piercing glare both comforting and terrifying. And then he too was gone.

Akinori grabbed his and Yukie’s hands and gave them a quick squeeze before walking off the porch.

“This is my fault, Koutarou,” Yukie hummed faintly. “I’m so sorry, but I know you'll take care of us..."

And then she was gone.

She was probably lying, but Koutarou believed her anyway.

 

 

The fall passed quickly as he clumsily spun the dried nettles into knobby, uneven yarn. The ratty fibers grew surprisingly softer the more he ran them across the unsharpened side of a knife. Time that should have been spent gathering more food was dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of the drop spindle. They were rather challenging. Without a voice to release his frustration, and deciding that thirteen was far too old to cry, Koutarou punched and kicked the side of the house whenever he broke the thread, often gathering Hinata and Kageyama’s attention.

“There’s nothing wrong with that house,” Kageyama observed. His voice was deeper now, and in seven months he’d grown from an adorable boy to an awkward adolescent. As he looked intently at the wall Koutarou just kicked, the panting boy realized that the crow spirit was almost as tall as he was.

“He’s kicking it because he’s sad Kageyama!” Hinata spat craning to reach their heights. His voice cracked in the middle of his sentence, which embarrassed him a great deal. “Be a little more sensitive, maybe?”

“That conceited cherry tree knocks me off his branches all the time, but I don’t kick him.”

“No, you just grumble and tell me. But Owlhead can’t talk, so whose he gonna tell when his nettle string breaks?”

Koutarou sighed heavily and soundlessly, and picked up the spindle again.

 

 

Despite Tatsuki’s advice, that winter Koutarou very nearly starved.

By the first frost, he’d only gathered a fraction of what was necessary to survive, and being unaccustomed to most matters of food preservation, he didn't do a very good job, something he wouldn't realize until the food he had preserved made him violently ill months later.

This danger was something of which Koutarou was, of course, blissfully unaware. He spent the bulk of his days wrapped in a blanket on the porch knitting the large square that would serve as the back for Haruki's haori. The needles he had used on the tabi were much, much too small, so he had instead made his own out of some bamboo from a nearby grove.

Hinata and Kageyama would sit on either side, playing a game Koutarou referred to "Stupid Questions" while secretly loving the attention. Usually it started with an argument between the ayakashi, such as:

"I bet humans have lots of babies at once."

"No, they just have one, dumbass."

And Koutarou would indicate with a nod of his head who was correct.

It grew a bit awkward when things like, "I bet humans have tons of mates!" or, "There must be a lot of fights when human females go into heat..." came up. But for the most part, it passed the time, which would otherwise be monotonously spent knitting a line, and then discovering that he'd done so incorrectly and pulling it out. And then knitting it again. 

It wasn't until the first snow that Koutarou realized that he did not have enough food.

He made attempts to rectify the situation, mostly by rationing what he did have. But he was entering a growth spurt, and the demands of his body assailed his mental fortitude. His hands shook and his head grew dizzy. His stomach screamed, making more noise than his entire body had made in nearly a year. Even his best attempts at self control were not enough, and when all was said and done he ended up eating in one sitting more than he would have otherwise, including some of the fish jerky he had prepared early that spring.

This shriveled up fish would be both his doom and his salvation. 

The next morning dawned and Koutarou could not sit up. His eyes refused to open all the way, and his dizziness from hunger had doubled, no, tripled in intensity. The tight clench of his hands wouldn’t loosen, and his mouth felt dry. He had just enough strength to roll onto his side before his vomit splattered across the floor.

There are no words, even for one who could speak, to capture the sheer terror of a boy, alone in the forest, with no one to care for his sudden, strange illness.

Koutarou had been ill many times throughout his childhood. In fact, he had memories of his father placing a cooling cloth on his feverish brow and singing some long-forgotten song in his deep, tuneless voice. But in all of his life before or since, he had never, ever experienced or witnessed an illness of this sort of intensity.

It was as though his body was rapidly dying but his spirit was not allowed to leave. Time meant nothing – he had no idea if minutes or hours or days had passed. He couldn't move from his side, or open or close his eyes. They stayed half shut, tears reflexively streaming across them. Shadows came and went, trying to give him water, but it simply dribbled out, or worse, choked him, though he couldn't cough. Until he felt strong hands turning him, then grasping his neck, massaging his throat into a swallowing motion, he was certain he was going to die of thirst.

In such a horrible state, his mind started to float away, ignoring the moments when his body was moved, given water or miso, ignoring everything. He slept with his eyes open because they would not close. He heard a strange, unfamiliar voice, though he couldn't make out what it was saying.

Someone closed his eyes, and he let sleep, or maybe death, take him.

 

 

When he woke up weeks, months, years, later he was gagged, lying on the bare floor without a blanket over him.

But he could blink. Well, somewhat. One of his eyes was a bit more hooded than usual, and he couldn't make it open all the way. His fingers felt more like claws than anything. But he could wiggle them, and his toes. Enough to pull away the cloth between his lips that some kind soul had put on him to keep him from talking. He could swallow. He could even turn his...

If he'd had the strength, he'd have jumped at the sight of the bizarre looking boy lying next to him, watching his every movement with unconcealed fascination. Since he did not, the two simply stared at each other, Koutarou crinkling his nose as he pulled off his gag, and his strange guest grinning at him in a way that could only be described as catlike. An observation that made sense given the ragged cat ears that were peeking out of his asymmetrically crested hair. If any question remained, the long black tail slowly flicking through the air answered it.

It was entirely possible that Koutarou was dead. Only, he wasn't in a new body and Yomi, if he was there, was so much less terrible than described it was laughable.

So perhaps he was not.

"We're even now," the boy's voice was pretty deep for someone who looked to be Koutarou's age. Well, maybe Koutarou's voice was deeper too, he hadn't heard it in awhile. Either way, he had no idea what this cat... child was talking about and it was apparent on his face.

"Don't you recognize me?” he demanded. “You ought to you've given me an entire boat’s worth of fish."

Koutarou nodded as though he did.

He didn’t.

"Yeah, it’s still me! But now, thanks to your hearty diet, I lived long enough be considered unnatural, and got chased out of the village by some old lady who tried to chop off my damn tail!” Said tail danced in Koutarou’s face as though he needed to be reminded what it looked like.

“I guess, she wasn’t wrong;” the cat boy chuckled, “after that, I realized I could turn into a human, and do all your weird human things, so I guess that makes me a bakeneko now. Anyway, between showing you how to do that whole spinning… thing, and now saving your life from fish poisoning I think we're even. So I'll be off. There’s someone on the mountain I’ve always wanted to meet. That’s where I was headed, actually, when your little kitsune grabbed my leg and wouldn’t let go."

Still nodding in bewildered agreement, Koutarou vomited all over the black haired boy’s lap.

 

 

The youkai tried to leave. And Koutarou was more than happy to see him go, because he had lots of annoying cat habits, like spontaneously knocking cups on the ground, getting underfoot, and barreling noisily through the small house at the edges of night and morning. All this he did in both his human and feline forms, the former infinitely more destructive and absurd.

Unfortunately, the bakeneko seemed unable to go. It wasn’t necessarily his fault. Koutarou’s rehabilitation took more time than expected, and the grinning ayakashi was a lot kinder than he seemed..

"So you can't feed yourself?” the cat smirked when Koutarou’s unstable hands couldn’t hold chopsticks, a spoon, or even a large chunk of duck potato. “Well that's just fine, I hear the mountain's pretty miserable this time of year anyway… guess I could stay a bit longer and watch you make such a damn mess."

Winter drew on and still the cat did not make his way to the mountains. And it still seemed directly related to how long it was taking Koutarou to singlehandedly complete the most basic functions necessary to human life.

"You seem to be able to keep down the soup there, chatty, so I think I can finally head up to the mountain to find... oh wow did you just fall off the porch? Okay. That's great. You'd think someone who lost as much weight as you did would be easy to pick up but actually not so much. How's the snow feel?"

Koutarou’s guest just would not leave.

And though illness had ravaged his body, leaving him with trembling hands that didn't grasp and legs that did not support him, he would have starved without the weeks it had put him in a state of near stasis. Now he could hear Haruki's mournful calls in early morning and late dusk, and sometimes even managed to get up to open the door and see his worried brother, but Koutarou could not live off a diet of mice, or rotten carcasses, or whatever the animal spirits would have brought. Without the bakeneko, he would not have lasted the winter.

So he put up with the youkai, and began to find his annoying habits more amusing than anything. Seeing a lanky young teenager pounce on ash as it skipped across the floor was impossibly hilarious. And the cat had never truly mocked him, even though he helped him dress, bathe, and even relieve himself as Koutarou's extremities slowly regained feeling and mobility.

It was the very edge of spring, nearing the very day that would signal the beginning of his second year of silence when Koutarou opened the door to discover the bakeneko on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, feet and tail in the air.

Reading.

The stupid cat could read.

With speed that belied his long illness, Koutarou grabbed charcoal out of the fire and scrawled an enormous incomplete sentence on the wall.

**WHAT YOUR NAME?**

"Kuroo," the black cat huffed, looking a little offended as though it were obvious. "Don't you remember? You gave it to me, Bokuto."

And it was spring once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay let's talk about botulism. First off unlike salmonella and e coli, it is not caused by bacteria, but actually the botulinum toxin that a certain bacteria create. The same toxin is the active ingredient in botox, actually, because it paralyses your face. Anyway, this stuff is the most acutely lethal toxin known, fifty grams could kill everyone on the planet. People get it in a few ways, but the improperly preserved food route is the biggest. Botulism is... terrible, you kind of stop moving, and depending on how well your body fights it without treatment, there's a fifty percent death rate. If you survive, it takes a very very very long time to heal, sometimes with permanent neurological damage.
> 
> ALSO, the type of tuberculosis that affects humans, cannot survive in avians. So... being turned into an owl would theoretically cure Haruki of his consumption.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From here on, here are a few notes.
> 
> Written words will be in BOLD
> 
> Spoken words will be in "parentheses' 
> 
> Signed words will be in italics.
> 
> Underline will be used for emphasis to avoid confusion.

With Kuroo’s presence, the second spring and summer went quickly. It was strange how that worked, because he left almost immediately once the sakura were in bloom. Koutarou’s savior insisted that he had to make his way to the mountain to find the mysterious unnamed youkai that the bakeneko seemed devoted to without ever having met.

The days before his departure had been spent in long conversation, Koutarou scrawling his simple phrases in charcoal on the floor, Kuroo responding as easily as though they were actually speaking. Even with his accommodating nature, Kuroo was still… very much a cat. He didn’t understand Koutarou’s filial devotion in the slightest, and at certain points recommended that they wander off together in search of potential sexual conquests, not a single leer apparent in his voice.

Though their human forms were similar, thirteen in cat and thirteen in human were very different ages. Kuroo had been a father dozens of times over, while Koutarou had seen nothing beyond a woman’s breasts while she was nursing, which was quite possibly the least sexual thing imaginable. Their very concepts of fatherhood were completely different. Kuroo took absolutely no responsibility for his progeny, and was completely unashamed, whereas the absence of Koutarou’s father was probably the reason the Bokuto family was in such a chaotic state to begin with.

Despite these cultural differences, the two discovered a shared passion for nearly killing themselves through sheer idiocy. They reveled in this pursuit by falling into frozen lakes, climbing trees they could not get out of, exploring unknown caves full of unstable ground, and a host of other foolhardy behaviors that appeal to a certain species of teenager (or cat).

“Don’t eat any bad fish while I’m gone, big guy,” Kuroo had said as he’d left, relaxing himself into his natural cat form, which had become quite a bit larger than it used to be. Then he was off, a slow, loping gait taking him through the back of the glade and up the mountain. 

The real reason the months to come passed so quickly was because Koutarou was completely certain that his friend would return.

 

The late spring was spent planting the seeds that had, remarkably, not rotted over their two years in wait. Koutarou even took a risk and cleared out a shallow area of the pond to plant some rice. He had no idea if fish or anything else would eat the seedlings, but it seemed worth the effort. Also, he was not aware of the fact that rice did not need to be planted in water to grow. The moments he had left after tending his garden were spent frantically knitting, until once more it was time to harvest the nettles.

Describing the relentless agony of a young man is both tedious and unpleasant. Koutarou picked the nettles. Koutarou was in constant, searing pain. During this specific harvest, he inadvertently inhaled whatever it was that made the nettles sting, and could barely breathe for half a day. Haruki tried his best to stay with him during that night, but his hunting instincts inevitably took over, leaving Koutarou alone with his wheezing. The sound was the first to come out of his mouth since his ordeal began. 

But he recovered. That was all that mattered.

When his family arrived on the cusp of autumn: some taller, all with wild hair and desperate for human food, the first thing they saw was Koutarou’s grin. He was proudly holding up a garment: rough, uneven, but unmistakably a haori. Yukie and Akinori smiled a little brighter, Yamato’s jaw dropped in shock, Wataru chuckled quietly, and Haruki screeched.

Their celebrations were dampened by the realization that Tatsuki had not come back.

 

 

It was to be expected that the Bokuto siblings would slowly forget their humanity. The tengu had said as much. But as Koutarou’s remaining brothers and sister flew once more into the night, his heart sank further than it ever had. The balloon filled with buoyant hope and poorly justified self-confidence that had kept him afloat despite loneliness, sickness, and physical pain began to collapse in on itself. It was actually quite amazing that it had lasted for so long.

But there was nothing to be done about it. Life carried on in a relentless rhythm, and death for both himself and his family was the only alternative. The young man harvested and spun just as he had the previous year. His moods rose a little and crashed back down with the million victories and defeats that each sunrise brought. A flawless drop of the spindle left him pleased for hours while the loss of even a few grains of rice sent him into a rage, slamming his head against whatever was nearest until blood ran in streams into his eyes.

And of course he cried. But he had never stopped doing that.

 

 

“I’m telling you Bokuto, Kenma is amazing!” Kuroo said, sprawled out on the floor next to the fire, taking up space that Koutarou would have very much liked for himself. “A little flighty, maybe, and doesn’t love to talk. But wow… those eyes. And those tails!”

 **Tails?** Koutarou scratched into the ash with the end of his knitting needle. He did not understand the significance of tails, singular or plural.

“ _Really_ powerful cat spirits have two tails,” Kuroo drawled, rolling onto his back and resting his hands on his collarbones. “I’m just a housecat that lived too long but Kenma, he’s lived on the mountain for thousands of years, I’m pretty sure. Doesn’t look at day over four, though.”

Koutarou tried to care about Kuroo’s strange fascination with what was apparently a millennia-old man-eating nekomata, but he just didn’t see the appeal. A part of him was also worried that maybe this other ayakashi would take Kuroo away, and the thought made him curl up into himself.

He was lost in such worries when Kuroo curled up in his lap, an annoying habit at the best of times, but particularly so when done as a human.

“You’re not listening to me,” he announced, putting his face directly in Koutarou’s, narrow yellow eyes glittering in the lamplight, “and right now, I want to be listened to.”

Koutarou rolled his eyes with a smirk and shoved him across the floor. Kuroo landed on his feet and dashed forward, knocking the needles and yarn out of Koutarou’s hands and rolling them both across the room, a swirl of limbs and tail. Kuroo could not hold his completely human shape unless he was concentrating, but he took advantage of his instability, shifting out of Koutarou’s arms as a cat, only to pin him once again as a human. It was absolutely infuriating, and in some ways, very good practice if Koutarou were to get in a fight.

When they were exhausted, learning against each other and panting, Kuroo made a very unexpected pronouncement.

“You know, since you’ve got those katana, we should to learn to be samurai.”

Koutarou almost killed his entire family in his haste to agree.  

 

Despite being the son of a samurai, Koutarou was unfamiliar with the practical steps a man followed became one. He also knew they were no longer allowed, but since it was the Emperor who had made that decision, he didn’t care. If he and Kuroo became powerful enough, then maybe he could take someone away from the Emperor, the way he’d had someone taken from him.

In spite of being a cat, Kuroo knew just a little bit more, or so he thought. Mainly, that it involved some prowess in the martial arts, most entertaining of which was fighting with the samurai’s daisho. Kenma had spoken at length of samurai of the past, and he believed becoming one was an excellent way to earn his favor.

Since neither knew much of anything, much of the winter was spent with the two boys hitting each other with sticks.

During this experience Koutarou began wrapping his hands to keep them from swelling, since both of them were very good at hitting, but not particularly skilled at not being hit. If their weapons had been bladed, they likely would have cut each other’s limbs off and then bled to death in a pile of adolescent regret. His arms he didn’t mind so much, but his fingers were necessary if he were to finish Wataru’s enormous haori before the end of summer.

“What is the point of this?” Kageyama watched the two as he yanked off pieces of the rabbit carcass Hinata had drug into the glade.

Shifting back into a human, Hinata reached out and grabbed the crow, “That is my lunch! If you want to eat something, go hunt yourself!”

Unhappy being grasped in such an undignified way, Kageyema shifted into his human form as well. Being much larger than the kitsune, they fell to the ground in an undignified heap, immediately rolling across the frozen ground in a flurry of black and orange.

And thus the winter passed, in glorious battle.

 

Kuroo left once more in the spring, humming tunelessly to himself promising that he’d come back with knowledge of bushido. Koutarou wasn’t quite certain who he was going to ask, but he felt confident that the clever cat would find a way.

The moment the tall boy’s crested hair was out of sight, Koutarou began the endless work required just to keep himself alive. This year, there was the added necessity of shifting from his own clothing to something with broader shoulders. Yamato’s fit, but were still much too long, so his yukata was girded and tied back with a tasuki at all times, even when it wasn’t particularly necessary. The bulky folds were a nuisance, but he had grown out of both his own, and Akinori’s attire.

Many people were stunted by sickness, his own brother included, and Koutarou feared that his winter of paralysis would leave him short and broad forever. He and Kuroo couldn’t take down the emperor like that.

But his height being his greatest concern left him with quite a blissful season.

 

Summer was nearing its height, the heavy heat and cicadas indicating that he soon needed to harvest the nettles, a task Koutarou dreaded to the point of lost sleep. As a result of this insomnia, he was up and about, harvesting vegetables while even Haruki was still out hunting.  

It was thanks to his insomnia that everything changed.

He heard the boy before he saw him. But that wasn’t particularly impressive, because the person who approached the glen had the loudest footsteps Koutarou had ever heard.

Normally he’d conceal himself at the sound of someone nearing. Though strangely, the travelers, hunters, and other wanders who passed the sakura and maple arch never seemed to look through it and into the glade. It was almost like they couldn’t see it at all.

Koutarou couldn’t hide without dropping his armful of cucumbers, and he needed those cucumbers. Assuming that the noisy wanderer was just going to pass by, he gathered up the vegetables and walked to the porch to drop them off. The steady crunch of leaves echoed loudly behind him, but he paid the sound no mind. When the sound disappeared, he idly hoped that the person didn’t run into the patch of poison ivy that was a five minute’s walk in the direction they were probably headed.

Dusting off his hands on his yukata as he turned, he saw the boy mere feet from him.

On sight, Koutarou’s immediate reaction was panic bordering on terror. The invader was wearing boots, dark pants, and a high collared jacked with bright metal buttons. Very much like the soldiers from his distant recollection. And he was tall, taller than Koutarou was himself, though also much slimmer. But it was this slight build that indicated that he was also a young man, though one who seemed to have skipped the scrawny awkward phase that Wataru had endured in order to reach that height.

His father’s short knife tucked in his obi felt impossibly heavy as Koutarou readied himself to fight.

But as his gaze reached the stranger’s face, panic was replaced by an emotion Koutarou wasn’t particularly certain of. His heart was still racing, but not out of fear.

Dark green eyes, like the sunlight on deep, still water peered at him with mild astonishment. Slow blinks flourished eyelashes that were thicker than Koutarou had ever seen on a human. Full cheeks, like a young child’s, or the faces of the imaginary beautiful women that Akinori had once painted. All this on a boy no older than Koutarou was himself.

He hadn’t been face to face with a stranger in two years, and this one looked like a… a pretty… _baby_. Or something. With curls and soft skin. Like a… baby would have.

Had Koutarou been permitted to talk, he would have sputtered himself into silence.

For his part, the boy wasn’t making a single sound. His mouth was pulled down into a pensive frown, and he was staring at Koutarou just as much as Koutarou was staring at him. Kageyama fluttered down from the roof and sat on the grey haired boy’s shoulder, looking curious, which probably wasn’t helping things at all. Luckily Haruki was asleep, or he’d probably be there too.

Someone needed to talk first, and obviously it couldn’t be the one sworn to silence.

Koutarou had been practicing the response he'd prepared in case of a situation like this. It was a gesture that would let them know he couldn’t speak, while establishing him as a sane person who still had control over his own mind. Not a mindless idiot like everyone was bound to assume.

But the boy wasn’t speaking either, just holding his elegant hands in front of his chest and moving his long fingers nervously. Koutarou had to do something or they’d be staring at each other until Kuroo came back and stirred up some kind of trouble. He moved his hand, which had been nervously tugging at his ear, across his face, touched his mouth insistently, then moved his hand away and shrugged, shaking his head with an apologetic expression. The gesture had the added bonus of sending Kageyama back to his beloved maple tree.

He hoped it looked as convincing in real life as it did in the pond’s reflection.

The boy’s eyes lit up and his hands began to fly over each other, forming a series of complicated gestures that Koutarou couldn’t even follow, let alone interpret. The dumb look was clear on his face, because the boy suddenly stopped, dropping his hands with the resigned grace of a person who was quite familiar with not being understood. 

With a motion even more practiced than Koutarou’s he pointed at his ear and then shook his hand in a clear negative.

He couldn’t hear. And it was assumed that he wasn't like Koutarou who for very good reason _wouldn’t_ talk. Instead, this boy _couldn’t_. It wasn’t readily apparent to Koutarou how someone lost his hearing, or when, but he could only imagine the teenager before him as a small boy, being treated… like a pet, or an idiot, or something equally negligible. Talked around, the same way Koutarou’s family and most of the youkai talked around him. 

A well of sympathy, pity, compassion over mutual suffering swelled in Koutarou’s heart.

But, this person didn’t look like he needed pity. In fact, he didn’t look like he needed anything at all. Maybe, though…

Maybe he liked tea. 

 

The boy did _not_ like to be dragged, but Koutarou was much, much stronger than he was so he didn’t even notice he was resisting. Amber eyes looked back encouragingly as he pulled him towards the house, but the boy just looked peeved, his light frown growing into a heavy scowl, until it sank his whole face into a grimace. But Koutarou was not taking no for an answer. The boy begrudgingly followed as he toed off his sandals on the porch and scampered into the house, hanging water over the coals to boil.

Tea. Guests got tea. He’d never had guests before, but he remembered Akinori making tea for his buyers, Yukie making it for Kaori-san. That was enough to justify using some of his very limited stores now.

The boy stood in the doorway, boots off, looking nervous. He moved his fingers again as he bowed, then stepped over the threshold. Koutarou beamed at him, his heart fluttering around his chest for reasons he only vaguely understood. But at least part of his excitement was this: his visitor was a human. A human for the first time! One who could perhaps stay, or at least visit. Kuroo was his best friend and the quarrelling duo were entertaining if nothing else, but… none of them were human. There was always a gap between what they expected out of their lives, and Koutarou’s expectations. His duty. Maybe if this boy would be his friend, he wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.

Maybe.

His wide smile wobbled, as tears filled his eyes. The boy looked at him, his deep scowl rising just the tiniest bit into something like confusion. Dusting off his dark uniform, he sat in seiza on the floor, his spine ramrod straight like he was about to get a lecture from an angry grandmother. From a satchel that Koutarou had not noticed, the boy pulled out a slate, and a piece of chalk.

Before the water was boiling, the slate was thrust into Koutarou’s hands, the boy eyeing at him with little to no hope in his gaze. The kanji were impossibly neat, and almost beyond his reading comprehension, but he could fill in the blanks well enough for the ones he did not know.

**Good morning. My name is Akaashi. I am staying on the other side of the mountain. I am lost. Do you know any villages where I can get help?**

Koutarou reached out and grabbed the chalk in his thick hand. He was so nervous his hand was shaking, but he tried to push it aside. He began to write on the other side of the slate, his large hiragana taking up much more space than necessary.

**MY NAME IS BOKUTO! PLEASE LET ME SHOW YOU THE WAY I KNOW THIS MOUNTAIN BETTER THAN ANYONE!**

He slid the slate across the floor and Akaashi (he had a name!) scanned the contents, looking bemused before he flipped it over and erased his own words with a rag he pulled out of his pocket. Koutarou occupied himself with preparing the tea as Akaashi wrote, impatiently glancing up from the water every few seconds as though he were anticipating the best gift of his life.

**Are you certain you know the way Bokuto-san? I thought that I did, and now I am here. I was walking in circles, constantly returning to those two strange trees.**

Koutarou briefly thought that the bit about the trees was odd, especially given his own experience with the glade, but he was much too excited to give it any sort of deep consideration.

**YES! I HAVE BEEN LIVING HERE FOR OVER TWO YEARS!!! I KNOW THE FOREST BETTER THAN ANYONE. I AM THE BEST, AKAASHI, AND I WILL GET YOU HOME! And what are those things you were doing with your hands?**

He slid the slate across the floor, edging just a little closer as he poured two cups of tea. It wasn’t done in the proper way, but he didn’t know the proper way, so this would have to do. He tried to watch as Akaashi wrote, but the boy was well aware of his interest, and covered his writing with his arm.

**It is a language without sounds I use to communicate because I cannot hear. Nothing untoward, I assure you.**

Koutarou nearly broke the chalk in half in his haste to ask his next question.

**TEACH ME!!!!! PLEASE PLEASE!!!!! I CAN HEAR BUT I CAN'T SPEAK!!!!**

It really was more of a demand, actually.

The stiff young man blinked at him over his tea for a very long moment. It was a look that Koutarou had no idea how to decipher. His guest sat his tea on the floor with a delicate spinning rattle, and then straightened his spine once more. Koutarou was nearly vibrating in his eagerness and desperation. 

The cup stopped moving.

Akaashi gave a sharp, quick nod.

It was probably convenient that Koutarou couldn’t shout, otherwise he would have scared off every single creature in the forest.

 

 

It became immediately apparent that Akaashi had his hands full teaching even the most basic elements of conversation.

 _No,_ he waved his hand across his face then made a complicated series of motions with one hand that Koutarou vaguely understood to be his name followed by an honorific, though he couldn’t follow the motion well enough to emulate it.

 _Bokuto-san_. The last part made him puff up a little. No one had ever called him that before. And maybe Akaashi was just being polite, but it felt good to be somebody’s senpai for once.

Was he the senpai? Probably. Yes. He was definitely somebody’s senpai.

Even if that somebody was taller than him. And was wearing clothing that had been recently washed. And didn’t have hair that stood up several inches from his skull like the crest of a…well… of an owl, ironically enough. And was teaching him, instead of the other way around.

They were sitting on the edge of the porch, legs dangling, knees bumping, the slate sitting untouched behind them. Akaashi had taught him the sign (that was what the individual gestures were called) for _hello_ but Koutarou insisted on doing it his way. It was a simple enough sign, Koutarou thought, not really knowing what a complicated one would be like. Two hands facing each other, with the pointer fingers dipping, like a bow.

He just liked to make his fingers dip three times, instead of once.

Heaving a sigh that was very loud, Akaashi grabbed the slate, wrote, and then held it up.

**Bokuto-san, it is not necessary to say, “Hello, Hello, Hello,” which is what you are doing.**

Koutarou grabbed the slate back and responded, **Maybe, but I like it! Would someone still understand me?**

When Akaashi saw his words, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, **Yes, Bokuto-san. They would.**

With an emphatic kick of his feet and a flourish of the chalk, Koutarou wrote.

**Then I think it’s going to be my thing.**

The rest of the morning was spent with Akaashi leading Koutarou around the glade, teaching him signs for everything. He even noticed Haruki in his tree, and showed him the sign for owl, chuckling as he did so for reasons Koutarou was suspicious of.

But the signs alone weren’t enough. He still didn’t understand how they went into sentences so he couldn't understand the statements that Akaashi made. Even when the taller boy was going as slowly as possible, his actions just looked like flying hands.

Koutarou’s excitement turned into frustration, and at the third attempt to understand a simple phrase that Akaashi had demonstrated, his patience broke. Waving his arm dismissively, he grabbed his fishing rod and stomped over to the pond, trying to blink back the tears that were gathering in his eyes.

He was absolutely stupid.

The thought rang in his mind like a gong as he cast the line, knowing that fish weren’t likely to bite at this hour with the shoddy bait he’d scrabbled from the mud. Reality was crushing him. The constant pressure to save his family, to do the _most important task he’d ever heard of_ by learning complicated things and putting himself through physical, emotional, and mental agony…

Koutarou just wanted to know he was good at _something_. And now, the only chance he had to talk he was already failing.

The squelch of loud, muddy steps announced Akaashi’s approach. A sharp tap at his shoulder, and the slate was right there. Koutarou sighed and pushed the rod into the mud in the off chance that some fish as stupid as he was would bite.

 **Are you alone here?** Akaashi had written. Underneath the four words was the evidence that he’d written and erased several other statements.

Not even bothering to flip the slate, Koutarou responded with a tersely scrawled, **Yes.**

Akaashi flipped the slate and wrote for a long time, until Koutarou’s despair turned into anxious energy. When the slate was finally in his hands again, he expected a dismissive acknowledgement that he was never going to understand how to sign.

That wasn’t what he got. 

**It was hard for me to learn at first. I threw tantrums because I did not have any words to tell anyone I was hurt, or scared, or even hungry. Hearing people treated me like an animal, until my father sent me to a school where I could learn with other children like myself. Even then, it took time.**

Koutarou wanted to say that even animals treated him like an animal, but he decided that Akaashi would think he was crazy. Something he absolutely did not want, since the elegant boy seemed to be telling him, _What you feel is real._

The thought made him feel stronger.

 **Happens to me too.** He gave Akaashi a sidelong glance as he wrote. **But it’d be worse to be little – I could talk before.**

Akaashi was once again writing and erasing and writing and erasing, like he was searching for the perfect words.

**If you show me the way back, I will come tomorrow. And we can try again.**

Their gazes caught, and Koutarou thought that maybe there were golden fish swimming in the jade waters of Akaashi’s eyes.

Which was absolutely a strange thing to think.

 

 

The isolated community of artisans on the other side of the mountain, one where Akinori had spent a decent amount of time, could be reached by a pass that was directly accessible through the back of the glade. The hike was not difficult, and Koutarou was very confused as to why Akaashi had not been able to make it there himself. But the taller boy stopped them far from the first building, and gave Koutarou explicit instructions to study as many characters as he could, with a promise he’d be back in the morning.

Each went his separate way, but Koutarou found himself looking back more than once.

There was an obvious problem with his assignment to learn more characters. The book that Koutarou had absconded from their family home was full of the information he needed, but it required a certain amount of ability to understand.

He and Kuroo had actually sat down over the winter with the intention to expand their knowledge of reading and writing since that was something samurai probably did. While Kuroo seemed a bit more competent, at the end of the day neither had learned much. Koutarou was not equipped to expand his literacy on his own.

His hike back to the glade was spent practicing the few signs he could recall. He was regretting the fact that the only person he could teach them to wouldn’t be back for months, when said person… or youkai, ran straight into him, knocking them both into the underbrush.

“Bokuto! We gotta get back as fast as possible, and clean the house and make some tea and maybe try to decorate a little? Flowers are nice, right? Beautiful people like flowers. And rocks. They also like pretty rocks.”

 _What?_ Koutarou signed, very confused about what the bakeneko was ranting about, but also very proud of himself for finally being able to talk back.

Kuroo stopped his ranting and cocked his head and the movement of his hands, “Okay, so this is some kind of development, and I want you to tell me about it, Bokuto, but right now we have an emergency because KENMA is coming to the HOUSE to teach us about SWORDS.”

There were a lot of potential reactions that Koutarou could have had, but he didn’t have the chance to select one, because Kuroo was pulling them down the mountain pass as fast as his long legs could carry him.

Kenma, was a nekomata. A demon cat. One of the most terrifying creatures in the mountains, an actual maneater. Koutarou had expected someone the size of a bear. Nothing else would have inspired the awe of the generally practical Kuroo to the point where he would absolutely fill the house with flowers. And by extension, bees.

But what Koutarou saw in front of him was a mostly white calico cat, just a bit bigger than a kitten, with two dainty tails leisurely wrapping around each other. Kuroo leaned on Koutarou’s shoulder, asking, “Isn’t he amazing?” in an awed voice.

The cat gave a tiny, disinterested meow.

Remembering himself, Kuroo bowed low. In response the cat sat up on it’s back two legs, and stretched until a small ageless person in a blood red kimono and snow white haori stood in its place. Golden hair hanging in long curtains swung with the brief dip of his head, revealing wide luminous yellow eyes when he stood up.

Kuroo smacked Koutarou in the back of the head, and he bowed too.

Hidden underneath his body, his hands signed, _Hello, hello, hello._

 

Kenma did not want to participate in, or oversee any amount of combat training. He wanted to lounge in the house with the screens open and play a game of Go against himself.

Apparently no one else could compete.

“It’s strange, Koutarou,” the nekomata muttered, his two tails twining around each other leisurely. “That you would even be allowed here is...”

 _What?_ Koutarou signed, getting his hands dangerously close to Kenma’s sharp teeth before Kuroo pulled him back.

“I don’t know that form of gesture,” Kenma huffed daintily, his hair lightly fluttering in the breeze, “if you knew what was done a millennium ago, we could…. but not now.”

“He asked ‘What?’” Kuroo could tell by now what Koutarou meant just by the look on his face. He seemed torn between nervous embarrassment and laughter. Koutarou had never seen him like this, wide eyed and flustered, his confidence demonstrating itself as sheer awkwardness.

“Because he’s,” his friend coughed clumsily as he added, “impatient.”

“Alright then,” the most powerful being in the glade, if not the mountain, sighed wearily. “This glade is a lovers’ sanctum. And he’s not the only impatient one…” Kenma briefly made eye contact with Kuroo, the tiniest ghost of a smile on his face.

 “… _kitten._ ”

Kuroo lost control over his form and his ears sprang up with an exaggerated quiver.

 _No no no no no,_ Koutarou signed repetitively, not yet knowing enough to say what he was really thinking, which was: he definitely wasn’t lovers with anyone who had been in that glade. The only visitors were his family – all owls; his new best friend – a cat who had turned into a youkai because he fed him too much mackerel; and two recently-matured animal ayakashi with nothing better to do than argue with each other over the best methods to pursue mates. 

And Akaashi. Whom he’d just met. And who didn’t seem to like him very much, even though he was helping. And who was most definitely not a woman, which was who you were supposed to love. If you were a man. Which Koutarou nearly was. So not Akaashi. Obviously that would be ridiculous although he did somewhat resemble a woman. A beautiful, beautiful smart woman with lovely hands, and Koutarou had never given a woman a second glance in his life so he honestly had no idea.

Kenma didn’t seem to care about the clear signs of teenage angst happening all around him, he just moved a white game piece and continued to speak, “Recently, hm… I’m not sure how you humans think of time, so less than a millennium but far, far more than a generation, there were two men, a handsome daimyo and his most trusted commander. And they were very deeply in love.”

The delicate man got caught up in his game and fell quiet for a long time. Koutarou and Kuroo exchanged nervous, silent glances. Actually Kuroo was silent. Koutarou was signing _what what what what_ over and over but Kenma wasn’t looking at him anyway.

He desperately needed to learn more words.

“It wasn’t the traditional sort of love between a master and his subordinate,” Kenma began abruptly, “fealty and camaraderie expressed through fleeting physical pleasure. Nor was it the love between the happiest man and wife, where commitment evolves into affection and joy. It was all of those things, wrapped up in intense passion and the devotion that comes from knowing someone since childhood. And it was unacceptable.”

He yawned and curled up on the floor, wrapping himself in his overlarge kimono and Kuroo made an audible whimper. “They lived two lives: one of obligation, where they fathered children with their wives and concubines, and one here, at the foot of my mountain in a house they built together. This house, actually. When the commander was gravely injured in battle with the Shogun, the daimyo brought him here, alone. He couldn’t save his life, and when his lover died, he killed himself.”

The flutter of wings announced Kageyama’s arrival. He landed and shifted into his human form, as tall and severe as ever, before sitting cross legged and saying, “And now he’s the most annoying tree in the damn forest. The maple is fine, but that sakura…”

“You didn’t tell me they used to be humans, Kageyama!” a voice called from the ground.

“Hinata,” Kenma broke into the first true smile Koutarou had seen since he’d arrived. “I didn’t expect I’d see you here.”

The only response he got was a fox transforming mid-jump into a wild-haired diminutive man, who tackled the nekomata to the ground, shouting random nonsense in the most jubilant voice any of them had ever heard. Kuroo looked nervous and just a little bit jealous.

Koutarou didn’t know enough words to express an opinion.

 _Hello hello hello_ he signed anyway.  
 

 

“Oh, yes,” Kenma’s lips smacked sleepily as he awoke from his impromptu nap, curled up in cat form next to the much larger fox. “You wanted to learn… something, Kuro?”

“Well, yeah,” he drawled casually. “I mean, that would be nice if you could teach us some kanji, I already know a lot but not all of ‘em, and really it’s just for Bo over here, but sure yeah I’ll listen if you’re teaching. Also, um… maybe if you taught us some of those sword drills, you know, kata…”

Wide yellow eyes blinked slowly, “You are trying too hard to be casual.”

But he taught them anyway.

Kenma was at best, an impatient teacher, at worst an abysmal one. His empathy for their lack of knowledge was simply nonexistent, which was in a way, fair since Koutarou had slept or skipped so much of his schooling that he’d missed everything other than hiragana and maths. Now he was trying to make it up all at once.

The nekomata taught them characters, then demonstrated the steps of several kata with Hinata (who was utterly clueless, but extremely enthusiastic). Once this onerous task was complete he reverted to his cat form and napped on a sunny spot on the porch while they practiced. Pedagogically, the system was not exactly sound, especially since Kageyama and Hinata took the opportunity to bicker with each other about the correct technique as they observed.

But Kuroo was very, very clever, and Koutarou refused to give up.

By the end of the evening, they both had earned a small smile from their sleepy teacher.

 

Akaashi kept his promise. The next morning, he discovered Koutarou asleep on the porch, a mangy, long-tailed black cat sleeping on his chest.

His impossibly loud bark of laughter woke them up.  

After that, the solemn boy came every day to teach and sit quietly under Haruki’s tree. When he wasn’t teaching, Koutarou showed him the small bits and pieces of his life in the glade: gathering nuts and berries, tending his garden, chopping wood. Akaashi was interested, as though such things had never been a part of his own life.

The boy stayed until the nettles were heavy with seeds and fresh green sprouted from the roots. Then in slow, careful signs he told Koutarou (and his ever present cat).

_I leave tomorrow._

Suddenly Koutarou’s hands would not work. All the signs he had learned were meaningless because he could not use them. So his only response was a petulant turn of his head, and a cross of his arms.

Akaashi was going to leave him.

Akaashi was going to _leave_ him.

Akaashi flicked him in the ear.

 _I come in summer to visit my mother._ He continued, very slowly. His face was annoyed and bemused all at the same time. _I will come back, Bokuto-san._

 _You clearly need more instruction,_ he added, knowing that it would not be understood.

Throwing his hands out haphazardly, Koutarou gave a chaotic response that was an attempt at _But Akaaaashi_ but in reality was mangled beyond belief. Koutarou didn’t even understand why he would come back? What was he getting out of the arrangement? Anyone could teach him to chop wood. Koutarou was just a broken idiot who couldn’t do anything, not even learn fast enough…

With one hand, Akaashi grabbed Koutarou’s shoulder and squeezed briefly. With the other, he pressed a hand bound book into his chest.

 _I will come back, Bokuto-san_ , he said when he let go.  

 

That year, on Koutarou’s birthday, neither Wataru, nor Tatsuki returned.

The oppressive terror of failure that kept the young man spinning until his fingers bled seemed to be the price he paid for his brief happiness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> livelylute created [art](http://silvercistern.tumblr.com/post/159800624580/livelylute-a-scene-from-silvercisterns-fic) for this chapter! please check it out, and their other wonderful art!!!
> 
> "male" calico cats do exist, although they actually are intersex
> 
> Regarding the lover's suicide that Oikawa commits upon Iwaizumi's death. I've thought long and hard about its inclusion. It is a cultural and period appropriate response to the situation, and it is, on a certain level tragically romantic. However, it's also a reaction to cold reality. Not only had Oikawa failed in preserving his lover's life, but their strange, dishonorable behavior might have led to the Shogun insisting he commit seppuku when he was caught (or worse, not allowed him to, and just cut off his head). Not to mention they'd been fighting him. Based on my extensive research through several dissertations, homosexuality in shogunate Japan, like in ancient Greece, was not anything like what we would consider a romantic relationship today (neither was hetero marriage, to be fair). Men having sex with men was common, and completely accepted. But uncomfortably, especially within samurai and monastic circles it was an older man having sex with his apprentice until said apprentice became an adult. The sex was expected to stop then. If it did not, it was very shameful. Two dudes of the same age ignoring their duties, and escaping to the forest to play house together was WILDLY inappropriate, especially when one of them was a lord.
> 
> I'm not saying this to destroy the romance of my own story... more to provide a context for how completely unromantic suicide is. I couldn't in good conscience leave it as some beautiful glorious thing of pure love. There is a lot going on there that has everything to do with practicality and little to do with romance.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Japanese giant hornets in this chapter. they are one of my greatest fears, and I survived writing this, so I think it's... tame but be warned.

But Akaashi came back.

And the first observance upon his arrival was this: Akaashi could not see youkai.

At all.

This realization was what confirmed to Koutarou that his own spiritual perception was, in fact, out of the ordinary. Something he probably should have noted quite some time ago.

Once again it was in late summer, on the cusp of the nettle harvest. Kuroo had come down the mountain for their weekly sparring session. The bakeneko seemed to be aging in time with Koutarou, for no matter how much taller the boy grew, Kuroo was always just a bit taller and just a maddening bit more mature, as though he were doing it on purpose. The lanky youkai had taken to wearing the reds that Kenma favored, though his were accented with black.

For his part, Koutarou had grown very nearly too broad shouldered for Yamato’s clothing, though he was finally tall enough for it. He remained quite jealous that he couldn’t just conjure his attire whenever he wanted the way his friend could.

The two of them were practicing katas under the gingko tree. The loud crack of the bokken Kenma had summoned out of apparent thin air was trying Haruki’s patience, and he yapped at them for quite some time before giving up and watching with one closed eye.

When the two of them finally paused for breath, Koutarou heard soft clapping behind him. His arm fell as he turned to see Akaashi, a small impressed look on his face, and a basket under his arm. His heart jumped in his throat, then even higher when, after a bow, Akaashi began to praise him in the signs that Bokuto had diligently studied over the winter.

_It was like there was a person, not your cat._

Koutarou was very confused. Kuroo leaned his head on his shoulder, while Akaashi looked at the ground curiously.

 _Friendly cat,_ he signed.

“Watch what I can do,” Kuroo whispered in Koutarou’s ear. The bakeneko sauntered forward until he was directly behind Akaashi, putting an arm around his waist and nuzzling his neck. Akaashi continued to look at the ground, bemused as though the cat were twisting in between his legs.

“Except for you, humans can’t see me unless I want them to,” Kuroo smirked, burying his face in Akaashi’s hair. “I’m just an innocent cat… Bokuto, he smells like peaches!”

It was then that Koutarou was struck with an awareness that would have been obvious to anyone else long before: the ayakashi he saw were something that others could not.

Koutarou tried not to make his annoyance known, but did a terrible job. For his part, Akaashi scowled and fidgeted a bit with discomfort, whether it was with the poorly disguised glare he seemed to be getting, or the hint of Kuroo’s presence was hard to say. Shaking his head, Koutarou decided to ignore the cat’s needling, and instead focus on the person he had not expected so soon. He bowed in completely the wrong way, too busy looking at Akaashi’s face, his grin impossible to moderate.

 _I used the book you made!_ he moved his entire body as he signed. Because Akaashi had indeed made a book, hiragana phrases and kanji in his perfect handwriting under delicately illustrated signs. It was well-worn, as though he had made it a long time ago. The work that had gone into had to have been extensive. Yet he had pushed it into Koutarou’s hands without knowing him for more than a week.

Koutarou wanted him to know that giving him such a precious object had been well worth it. He’d spent the entire year studying with Kuroo, who, as with everything, picked up on it even quicker than Koutarou did.  

_Akaashi I am so great now! I bet I could be a… writing person… but with hands? Oh! And what’s in the…?_

He trailed off, not knowing the sign for basket. Or poet for that matter. But at least the basket was available to be pointed at.

The dark haired boy made a sign, telling him what it was.

 _Once more!_ Koutarou demanded, not getting it the first time.

Akaashi obliged.

 

 

The basket was full of onigiri. And full really was an understatement. When Koutarou picked it up, he felt physically weighed down. He honestly had no idea how Akaashi had carried such a burden over the mountain – he still looked just as he had the year before, tall and willowy.

 _Made by my mother_ , Akaashi’s face flushed the tiniest amount as he slowly signed. _Our lesson could be a walk?_

 _Once more?_ Koutarou asked, grinning with unfettered excitement at what he thought he had understood. When the message was confirmed, he jumped in the air. With the basket in one hand, and Akaashi’s wrist in the other, he yanked them towards the forest, stopping only to grab his fishing rod on the way.

“Oh. Well, I’ll just be here then!” Kuroo called. “Watching your year’s supply of food. Maybe watching it with my mouth. Or just knocking it the mud, you know how I like to have fun. Be safe you two!”

Hiking and signing was actually a lot more difficult than Koutarou expected. This discovery was made through pain and suffering, namely after walking into several trees as he excitedly tried to ask Akaashi questions about his year, point out interesting parts of the forest, and, most frequently, boast.

Akaashi, who was never given a chance to see his questions before Koutarou experienced some kind of injury, finally stopped the rapidly deflating boy by asking if there were any sort of unique location where they could sit and have a lesson. With the same sort of enthusiasm as before Koutarou took a sudden turn, pulling his teacher along the cliff face until they were on a rather high ledge bisected by a fast moving stream that poured over a small, noisy waterfall.

Wiggling his hands free so his burdens were resting on his elbow, he asked with an obnoxious grin.

_Jump, Akaashi?_

Akaashi looked at the water. He looked at the wet rocks. And then he looked back at Koutarou, who was flopping about with so much nervous excitement that he looked like he might fall in the water just through sheer vibration.

 _Yes, Bokuto-san,_ he signed slowly though his face said no.

Luckily, Koutarou was completely oblivious. After a momentary flail of his arms that seemed to serve as a fanfare, he slipped off his sandals and wrapped them around his wrists. Grabbing the basket and his fishing rod, he jumped the gap at the edge of the spillover with little trouble.

His triumphant grin on the other side was somewhat impatient.

Akaashi left his boots on. He made several false starts that he tried to cover with as much dignity as he could muster. These efforts did not succeed, because when he finally made it to the other side he was being laughed at.

It is difficult to say what exactly Akaashi saw when he looked at his unexpected student. Certainly he was a peasant, dressed in such traditional clothing, but he also carried himself in such a commanding way for someone not yet a man, that it was almost a contradiction. Indeed, he was a study in contradictions, clearly self-sufficient, as he lived alone in the middle of the forest, but also desperate for attention and validation. Akaashi did not know if this desperation was directed solely at him, or not. It seemed possible, if, for no other reason, that the boy did not seem to spend time with anyone else.

 _Right here!_ Koutarou signed with a flourish that made it a bit more difficult to see what he was trying to say. He gestured to a rocky area, interspersed with grass, moss, and more flowers than Akaashi had ever seen in his life. There was a gap in the treeline and far below a small collection of houses was surrounded by fields.

 _Owl…_ Koutarou did not know the word, but he mimed two mountains and the space between.

 _Valley,_ Akaashi offered, receiving an extremely enthusiastic nod in response.

_Yes! Fukurodani was my village. But not now._

_Why is that?_

But the boy pretended not to see his question. _Let’s sit here!_ He settled on the grass, leaning against a sunny rock, preparing to open the basket.

 _Not yet,_ Akaashi smacked his hand. _We need to have a lesson first._

_I’m hungry_ , Koutarou pouted, pointing at his stomach. This lesson was very hard, and he was feeling particularly impatient. Akaashi had purposely not brought the slate, insisting that they would use signs for whatever needed said. And that… maybe made sense. Koutarou didn’t know. But it was making basic communication very challenging, with a lot of Koutarou miming concepts, and Akaashi showing him the signs. He was starting to think Akaashi was doing it to laugh at him.

His teacher’s own stomach was growling as well, but he was committed. _We will eat when you sign a row of kanji on this page. They are not new._

_This is mean!_

Akaashi snorted, _Teachers I had did this, hard,_ he took a stick and lightly rapped it against Koutarou’s knuckles, _for each mistake. Would you like that?_

Koutarou gaped at him, _No!_

 _I wrote my father and they left,_ Akaashi signed. _You would like my school now. You should come too when I go back. I am not a good teacher, you could find one better._

His statement brought a sudden shift in atmosphere. Koutarou’s cheerful laziness was gone, replaced by a single-minded focus that was almost terrifying. It pulled him, for a moment, right out of the stuttering end of awkward adolescence into the straight-backed stability of a boy on the cusp of manhood.

Tucking his loosening grey and black strands into his headband, Koutarou stared at the characters as though they suddenly meant something. And continue to stare. After some time, Akaashi felt he needed to let him do what he would, and instead focused on the beautiful surroundings.

He could feel the wind dancing through his hair, the flowers, the strange mass on top of Bokuto’s head. He leaned his head back and felt the sun shining on his cheeks. He stayed that way for some minutes, feeling the power of the mountain seep into his bones. But the peace that normally thrilled him felt somehow lacking, and he drew his focus back to his strange pupil, who seemed to have absorbed everything there was to absorb.

Koutarou lifted his head, then lifted his hand. Without looking at anything but Akaashi’s, face, he made thirty-two perfect signs.

 _You are a good teacher, Akaashi!_ he grinned. _Or maybe I’m great? Both. Yes. Both._

Hiding his awe as best he could, Akaashi rolled his eyes. _Let’s eat, Bokuto-san._

 

 

 

Koutarou had not had proper onigiri in almost four years, and though he was still a tiny bit shorter, he was much broader than Akaashi was. It was expected that he would eat more than the slender boy. But that was not the case.

Akaashi ate a lot. And fast. In fact, Koutarou was somewhat worried that his friend was going to choke based on how quickly he inhaled the triangles of rice and salmon. He consumed two thirds of what was there, simply because Koutarou could not eat any more than he did.

Despite his lesser consumption, so much rice at once made Koutarou incredibly sleepy. He leaned back on the grass, insisting to himself that he’d just gaze at the sky for a moment.

Some time later, he found himself waking up to the sun in a completely different position in the sky. Next to him was Akaashi’s satchel, lying open with a sketchbook peeking out, showing multiple sketches of the flowers in the clearing.

Trying to locate the sketchbook’s owner, Koutarou raised himself to his elbows. It took a few sweeps with his bleary eyes to find Akaashi at the far end of the clearing, crouching over a delicate red flower. The late afternoon sun was glowing orange on his skin, and the serious boy looked more relaxed and happy than Koutarou had yet seen. The sight pulled at him, like a muscle that needed stretched after sitting too long. The sort that when he finally stood on his tiptoes, sent a pleasant twang all the way up his spine.

Koutarou had no idea what the feeling was, or what to do about it.

At just that moment of beauty Koutarou noticed the gap high in the trunk of the tree nearest the flower Akaashi was interested in. The split in the wood might have been out of sight had he been doing anything other than lying on the ground. There was nothing inherently wrong with the gap in the trunk, in fact it was normal for trees to do that.

It was the enormous yellow-orange and black insects crawling outside it that were the problem.

His heart jumped into his throat and it took every single ounce of his self-control and sense not to hiss a warning to someone who couldn’t even hear it. The white of Akaashi’s shirt and the dark of his hair was bound to attract their attention, not to mention the sweet scent that Kuroo had noticed earlier. Koutarou had caught a whiff of it too, whenever their shoulders knocked into each other. It had been nice, but now it was terrible, because they were drawn to perfumes and stark colors for reasons no one understood.

Suzumebachi. Hornets, bigger than a large man’s thumb

Koutarou had been stung by one of them once and only once, and the pain had been enough for a lifetime.

But it was rarely ever just once.

A single worker could sting multiple times, and whether that hornet was crushed or not for its efforts, its scent upon sting or death would call others in pursuit. When he was nine, a teenage girl in the village had been killed this way. Ten stings was all it took before her throat swelled up and she drowned on dry land. After that, the men had made certain to drill into every child how to escape the enormous insects if they came across them.

Stay low and sneak away. If they sting, run. In truth, a man cannot outrun them, but it is better to try than be swarmed once they attack. Look for a lake or pond. And above all else?

Pray.

 

With a sharp inhale, Koutarou lowered himself as far to the ground as he could, thankful for the green of Yamoto’s yukata and the dappled coloring in his hair. The closer he approached, the more of the creatures he could see, most flying off to cause destruction to some hapless creatures.

But one was flying closer and closer to the back of Akaashi’s neck, its almost silent hum completely unnoticeable. Unfortunately, the air from its rapid wingbeats was not.

With a motion that seemed to hang suspended in time, Akaashi reached back with his right arm, and swept away what he no doubt thought was a fly.

That was all it took. The huge insect evaded his hand, landed on the back of his neck, and stung.

Akaashi _screamed_.

With little concern for his own well-being, Koutarou scrabbled across the ground, trying to stay low and run all at the same time. In the nest, other curious hornets began to emerge, while the one who had stung Akaashi was preparing to sting the hand that had initially brushed it away.

Koutarou slapped it to the ground, then crushed it with his bare foot, while desperately trying hold Akaashi still. He ripped out the enormous stinger, rubbing his own forearms against the area, trying to move the scent to his own arms. All wasting precious time as the suzumebachi approached, but perhaps it would keep Akaashi safer if Koutarou were stung more.

Hefting the struggling boy over his shoulder, he ran faster than he’d ever run in his life.

Akaashi was sobbing into his back, a sound that warbled unsteadily through pitches that he himself could not hear. It was eerie and could have been beautiful, if it weren’t a possible portent of their own deaths. The sound reached a fever pitch as Koutarou gripped hard onto Akaashi’s thighs, readying himself to leap across the waterfall without slowing.

As he landed on the other side, lurching to keep upright, Akaashi fell silent and his struggling ceased.  

When Koutarou felt his first sting, right below the edge of his tied back yukata, he his arm spasmed, nearly dropping his burden onto the steep path he was bounding down, rock to rock cutting into his bare feet. It felt like it had felt before, a burning hot nail driven through his muscles, all the way to the bone.

He did. not. scream.

The next happened when he had almost reached the bottom, at the part of his thigh where girded fabric met skin. He could feel the hornet walking on his skin, but he couldn’t stop to shake it off. When the pain hit the large muscle, he staggered, leg unable to hold him. He spun himself forward so that his free shoulder, rather than Akaashi’s face slammed into a tree.

But he did. not. scream.

Despite the tremendous rattling, the boy on his back remained silent as well.

Koutarou had no idea how much farther the hornets would make chase, but the only way to really escape them was to submerge themselves, and the nearest place to do that was the pond back in the glade.

He seemed to end up in that pond frequently.

When he burst through the forest, Hinata and Kageyama were arguing about whose offspring were more robust, and Kuroo and Kenma were playing Go on the porch. Well, Kenma was playing, Kuroo was watching.

Hinata’s shrill scream of “Suzuembachi!!!” the instant he smelled their pheromones was followed by his dive into the forest. Everyone else was thrown into action. Kageyama flew away. Kuroo physically picked up Kenma and threw the extremely powerful being (who could probably stop the chaos completely) into Koutarou’s house, slamming all the screens shut behind him.

But Koutarou paid little attention. He was exhausted, and had been stung a total of nine times, mostly on his forearms and thighs but once on the cheek. Staggering unsteadily and only able to see out of one eye, he crossed the moss, and swung his burden from his shoulder to cradle him in his arms. Pinching Akaashi’s nose and covering his mouth, he slid them both into the pond.

He would have stayed there forever, the cool water easing his fevered skin, but Kuroo dragged him out by the scruff of his neck, which in turn brought out Akaashi. The dark haired boy was still unconscious, but gasped for breath the moment his mouth was uncovered.

“There were two and I killed them,” Kuroo began to methodically strip both of them, his eyes grim. “Oi! You dumb animals! Come back and help, the bees are dead!”

 _How?_ Koutarou asked with shaky hands.

With exaggerated swagger that did little to hide his anxiety, Kuroo brandished Koutarou’s father’s katana. “With this. I chopped them in half, just so. Y-you’d better catch up, Bokuto, I’m waaay better than you. Y-you hear me? Why are you always getting poisoned?”

He couldn’t move his hands anymore but Kuroo seemed to know what he was going to ask next. “I washed the sword off and put the hornet bits under a rock in the water. The scent’s gone, I’ll make sure Hinata checks. Nothing else is coming.”

Kageyama arrived first, fluttering down, but before he could shift his form, Kuroo pointed at Koutarou and asked, “Help me pull out their stings? My hands are kinda shaky, if I’m being quite...”

But Koutarou was neither a witness to that process nor the remainder of Kuroo’s sentence, because he’d passed out.

 

He woke up in his futon in nothing but his fundoshi, with large splotches of foul-smelling mud dotting his swollen skin. Turning his achy head, he opened his eyes to see Akaashi lying right next to him, sandwiched between two sleeping cats. Kuroo was only visible because his tail was draped over Akaashi’s back, but Kenma was curled up tight against the dark haired boy’s naked chest, purring loud enough that Koutarou could feel the vibrations.

Akaashi was awake, petting the tiny, man-eating nekomata who had somehow managed to hide his extra tail. Koutarou’s motions caught his attention and he signed, _What happened?_

Not knowing the sign (or the kanji) for suzumebachi, hornet, or even bee Koutarou tried to improvise.

 _There was a big… insect… that…_ he clenched and unclenched his fingers trying to figure out how to say it.

Akaashi’s eyes opened wide, _That was a…?_ the sign he made was very dynamic, but Koutarou didn’t know it.

The boy tried again, _A very large…?_ once again, Koutarou did not know.

_Black and yellow insect that hurts. This one kills?_

Koutarou nodded rapidly, finally understanding. _There were many._

 _And you saved me?_ Akaashi raised his eyebrow. _Or made it worse. Probably both._

 _Akaashi!_ Koutarou protested. _I carried you! A lot!_ Realizing he couldn’t very easily brag about his exploits in his condition, he sat up and crossed his arms, wincing at the number of aches in his forearms.

Next to him, Akaashi’s hands had drooped, and he was looking at him in shock.

_You need to see a…_

Koutarou wasn’t familiar with the sign, but assumed it meant doctor.

He shook his head, arms still crossed. Akaashi lifted his arms to argue, but let them fall to pet the cat.

 _Thank you_ , he finally signed with a tiny smile.

_But… was it necessary to remove my clothing, Bokuto-san?_

Koutarou turned bright red, because there was absolutely no way to explain that he hadn’t.

 

 

 

Early the next morning, without asking if it was necessary, Kuroo transformed himself into a honey buzzard and obliterated the suzumebachi nest. He said they were disgusting, but for unknown reasons, devoured them all anyway. He descended the mountain with Akaashi’s satchel over his shoulder, scanning through the book of sketches, and stopping at one.

He held it up to Koutarou, a sideways grin slashing across his face.

On the page was a boy with wild hair, asleep in the grass, looking serene and beautiful.

 _I guess I do look like that,_ Koutarou puffed himself up.

“You sure as hell don’t,” Kuroo scoffed, “but I guess he thinks you do.”

 

 

 

Akaashi left when the nettles were ready, their heavy seeds bouncing in the wind. He put another book in Koutarou’s hands, and didn’t look back when he left the glade.

Koutarou, on the other hand, stood in between the trees in late afternoon light for many long minutes.

Before he knew it, he turned sixteen.

He had tried to prepare. Imagined what it would be like. Told himself that it didn’t matter, it was only temporary. That he was going to succeed at his task and make them human again.

But when only half of his siblings returned Koutarou’s heart ached beyond comfort.

 

 

“You’re taking this really seriously,” Kuroo mocked as he slid in the door, trying to keep the cold out but mostly failing. “But honestly, I don’t know how you can knit and study at the same time. Especially if you need your hands to practice.”

 _Hello hello hello,_ Koutarou dropped his needles and scowled _. Then why don’t you help me_? he taunted back.   

It was a weak taunt.

Kuroo shifted into his cat form and out again, changing his snowy attire for a cozy, drier alternative. “Haven’t you been working yourself a little hard, my friend? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like having a sparring partner who can’t kill me with his eyes, but your hands are a little more delicate than mine and you’re wearing them out.”

 _What? My hands are not delicate, you stupid cat! They’re strong… and_ … there were other words he wanted to use, like manly, but he didn’t know how to sign them yet. _Really strong!_ he finished.

“Alright, you are definitely desperate for help,” Kuroo settled down in front of him, pulling the loose end of the blanket Koutarou was under over his own legs. “Why are you doing this, though? Really? I mean, I get you wanna save your family and all but this whole learning another language thing isn’t really necessary to do that.”

 _Neither is being a samurai_ , Koutarou blew a strand of hair out of his eyes. He had made Akaashi teach him that sign, even though the demand had been complicated and had elicited a long flat look when Akaashi finally understood.

“Well I’m doing it to protect Kenma, as his noble retainer,” Kuroo pulled a romantic pose.

_Kenma can make balls of fire. He eats humans sometimes. He doesn’t need help._

Kuroo crossed his arms, “Yes, but I’d rather he not dirty his little paws.”

 _He will set you on fire for saying that_. Koutarou chuckled.

“Well, it’s about as useful as you taking down the Emperor singlehanded.”

 _I doesn’t have to be him!_ the pale-haired boy protested for the thirtieth time. _I’m going to take someone in that family away. It doesn’t matter who. Just one. For my father. A trade._

“Okay well, good luck with that. But what about the signing?”

 _I can talk now, you ass!_ Another sign that Akaashi had been less thrilled about.

“Only to me and Akaashi. And you could write before. Just as well for communication.”

_It’s better than writing. It’s… like speaking._

Kuroo scratched his chin.

 _And I’m getting good at it!_ Koutarou insisted.

For once, Kuroo didn’t tease, “You’re getting good at knitting too, though. I mean, look how smooth that haori is. I might even wear it if I had nothing else to wear and needed a haori or I might die.”

Koutarou kicked him under the blanket. He thought he hadn’t been teasing.

“There’s something else. You’re an idiot, but the things you do on a whim rarely last more than a day. Remember when you decided to spend the summer mostly naked to save on wear on your clothes? The sunburn! Oh, wow, what a funny day…”

 _I have to do something or I’ll go..._ Koutarou signed with tight fingers, hoping Kuroo figured out the end. He didn’t want it to, but it felt like muttering.

“Oh,” Kuroo blinked, not expecting that. “Okay then, look here, this is the sign for ‘kill’ since you clearly don’t know it. Unless,” he grinned, “you were planning on stealing a princess or something.”

That winter, Koutarou kept quite busy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sabthemadfujoshi created [art](http://silvercistern.tumblr.com/post/159863787470/sabthemadfujoshi-quiet-by-silvercistern-is-an) for several chapters, including this one. please check it out, and their other art as well!
> 
> A note about writing sign language in general.
> 
> Firstly, I'm using JSL, not ASL, since I know neither, it was more authentic to look up the few signs I specifically define in JSL, despite the fact that the story is written in English. Also because "hello" in JSL is a wonderful sign, and allows Bokuto to say "hey, hey, hey!" 
> 
> Secondly, I am taking liberties with the way it is written for a few reasons. First of all, even Japanese, if it were translated word for word into English, would sound insane. The same is true with sign language; its grammar is very different and, if translated literally, would not make sense. So I am simply writing in English. Full stop. It seemed to me pointless to try to make the distinction of what "could" or "could not" be said in JSL, since the same sort of limitations exist for every language, English included. The entire dialog of the story would be stunted if I made such linguistic considerations, since they are speaking in Japanese.
> 
> Thirdly, Akaashi is teaching Bokuto how to sign, so he is being deliberately slow and simple in his delivery. As the story progresses, their signing will become more and more sophisticated. Unfortunately, in some cases, their language may be more lush than signing might allow. But again, this would be true if all dialog was in spoken Japanese as well.


	6. Chapter 6

By the spring before his seventeenth year, Koutarou had finished three haori. The first, Haruki’s, was as rough as it was possible for a garment to be while still being held together. The yarn was either too thick or too thin, and it was so uneven in shape that a beggar might give it a second glance.

Wataru’s was the second, and not much better, though the bigger problem was the size. Koutarou had fears about making it long enough so it had taken more than a season to make it a size he thought was safe. When he looked at the finished product, Koutarou was certain that it would fit because it was more like a blanket with sleeves than a haori.

Yamato’s which he had just finished, was a demonstration of how Koutarou had addressed the uneven yarn situation in his spinning. All of the yarn was more or less the same thickness. His stitches had become much tighter and more precise. In fact, they were too tight, and the edges of the garment rolled in on themselves. It was particularly noticeable and hilarious in the sleeves, which rolled nearly to the shoulders like decorative puffs.

But overall, Koutarou’s speed had picked up, and he even had yarn to spare thanks to the bumper crop of nettles from the previous summer. As spring arrived and Kuroo headed back up the mountain to serve his unwitting “lord,” (who was probably embarrassed by the attention), Koutarou’s self confidence began to blossom, returning to its natural state. Without anyone but Kuroo’s help, he’d solved the insurmountable problem of turning the nettles into clothing. He’d learned an entirely new language, for the most part. He’d become a proficient swordsman, at least with bokken. Since Akinori had taught him to shave on his sixteenth birthday, he was quite nearly a man. He was tall and strong, and probably handsome.

Akaashi had drawn him as such, so it had to be true.

There was not a question in his mind that he was going to save his family. And in his isolation, his dream of revenge had been given space to flourish as well.

It had never even remotely crossed his mind, how strange and insular his situation was. Though many avoided the forest, the trade between Fukurodani and the artisan community where Akaashi’s mother lived was robust. In general, there were many travelers who had good reason to go through Sakanoshita. He should have seen more people, especially since he wasn’t simply tied to the glade. The more capable he became at his tasks, the more leisure time was available. In the absence of Kuroo and Akaashi, he spent a great deal of late spring and early summer exploring the forest with Hinata and Kageyama, who now had the bodies (and hairlines) of middle aged men.

They still discussed him as though he weren’t there, but Koutarou was used to it by this point.   

It was upon return from one of these hikes that they first saw humans.

Hinata and Kageyama were in the midst of a loud squabble when the fox took a deep breath, and then stiffened. It was hard to say whether it was instinct, or the connection between the two, but they both instantly shrank into their natural forms and made themselves scarce.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened, nor the first time that Koutarou had been uncertain the reason behind their disappearance. Things that didn’t scare him at all spooked the youkai, most frequently birds of prey high in the sky. So he took no real note of this instance, assuming they would find him again. Or not. They were somewhat fickle creatures. 

But as he rounded the bend to enter the clearing in front of the glade, he heard the cacophonous sound of deep voices arguing. Ducking behind a tree, Koutarou, who lived by his gut, made a somewhat pathetic attempted at logically deciding his next move. He had avoided people for years, with the excuse that if he suddenly appeared without his family and unable to talk, something terrible would happen to him. And indeed, it was possible that it would, but that risk was often countered with urgent realities like the danger of starvation or the nine suzumebachi stings that had left crater-like scars on his cheek, arms, and thighs.

All because an equally valid truth existed, and that was that Koutarou did not trust himself to keep his mouth shut under the pressure of strange humans. He already wanted to jump from behind the tree, Tatsuki’s hakama flying around his legs, and give the intruders, who were clearly not just traveling, a piece of his mind.

Instead, he peeked from behind the trunk and tried to spy on them.

“This should be a good spot,” one said. He was standing right in front of the entrance to the glade, as though it were not there at all. “It’ll be a few years, till we can get this far, and we’ll have to cut down these trees and burn all of that bracken,” he laughed heartily, as though it were some kind of joke, “but then the train can go right over that pass and straight on to Kyoto, a direct line to Osaka.”  

The other men agreed, slapping his back. Only one in particular, a tall young man with an unnatural shock of red hair, strangely shaped eyes, an enormous nose, and pallid skin seemed to be taking frantic notes. He almost looked like a foreigner. Or what Koutarou had once thought a youkai should look like, until he realized they were all just ridiculous animals.

“I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” he said in perfect Japanese.

“Not this again.”

“What is it this time, Tendou?” a sneering young man asked. “Did your Scottish daddy send you a message from the grave?”

“Momentarily ignoring the fact that there’s no fiscal or practical point in connecting a burgeoning merchant center to the _old_ capital and we should be building Ushijima’s line to Tokyo instead… I just have a bad feeling about it.”

“You and your damn feelings.”

“Of course, Daishou. What would I, a civil engineer, know about rock falls, seismic instability, potential bedrock, and the like? By all means, ignore me because of my beautiful red hair. Bring the soldiers. Destroy this delightful forest so that whoever watches over it can curse us.”

“God, you’re so dramatic.”

“Yes, but I’m also riiiiiight.”

 

 

Koutarou did not know how to build traps and snares. But for the rest of the season, he tried, binding together young whippy bamboo to catch someone’s leg, digging holes and filling them with sharpened sticks, and many other impractical solutions to what he imagined was an enormous army coming to push down trees with their bare hands. By late summer, he had an entire obstacle course of mild to moderate disaster in the clearing in front of the lovers’ trees. 

The youkai had no difficulty getting past them. Kageyama flew, obviously, Hinata just took the long way around, and Kuroo seemed to delight in nearly being caught by every trap. Kenma, the few times he visited from that direction, simply floated across, often falling asleep in the process which left Kuroo to catch him to keep him from drifting away.   

Koutarou strutted around the glade, announcing his obvious victory, and feeling generally like a hero until Kenma mused, “How will your friend get in, I wonder?”

 

 

He was shaken awake, looking up to familiar eyes in a mostly familiar face. But something had happened. It was still soft, yes, but there was a sharpness to it as well, a stubbornness that spoke of clever self-sufficiency and an iron will.

The face of an adult.

 _Why are you sleeping in the middle of a mountain pass, Bokuto-san?_ Akaashi asked with a flat expression.   

 

 

 _At first there were only three of us,_ Akaashi began. _Myself, a girl named Kiyoko, and a boy named Ennoshita. We were all very young, and terribly behaved. There are things that young children can only learn through language. If they do not get it…_ his face was pained, _their minds do not grow._

When Akaashi announced that the day’s lesson was going to be a story which Koutarou then had to retell in his own words, he had expected something a little more upbeat, and perhaps a little less personal.

It was entirely possible that Akaashi had shared his expectations.

 _Kiyoko_ he signed the name slowly until he was certain Koutarou understood it, _has a wealthy father who thought a silent daughter would make a wonderful bride for a certain type of man. Ennoshita’s father is a scholar, who wanted to give his son every opportunity to succeed in the world._

He didn’t mention his own father, and Koutarou wanted to ask, but Akaashi was moving too fast.

_As time went on, other students came. Some older. It was very hard for them to learn. Some could hear a little, like Nishinoya and Tanaka, who once burned down the dorms. Another, like you, could not talk. He came from an orphanage with his friend. They had to be adopted together because he stopped eating or drinking whenever they were separated. I don’t know what happened to Yamaguchi to hurt him so, only that Tsukishima would not let go of his hand for months. Even though Tsukishima could hear, he stayed to help in the kitchen. Then he apprenticed with Furukawa-sensei. He is an ass, but a very good teacher for the young children._

_You are a good teacher too!_ Koutarou interrupted.

Akaashi looked at him mildly, but the corners of his mouth were lifting up just the tiniest bit.

_Pay attention, Bokuto-san. You’re going to have to tell me this information yourself._

Koutarou scoffed, _I can do it, don’t you worry. I’m the best at this!_

_For over ten years, Ennoshita has been my dearest friend. He is calm and quiet, like me, but he can keep the wild ones in line._

_Like the ones who burned down the building?_ Koutarou grinned.

_Indeed. But recently, we have begun to fight._

Koutarou fought with Kuroo every other day, and he wanted to say that, but he realized that, to Akaashi, he lived alone in the woods with his cats.

_A new teacher has come, with a new style that teaches us to read lips and to speak. I do not mind it, although I dislike speech. Tsukishima makes fun of my voice._

He held up his hand stopping Koutarou from wildly signing his disgust. _I filled his fancy boots with fish. It went unnoticed for weeks, so we’re even._  

Koutarou’s nose scrunched up in disgust, and Akaashi smiled. _How did he not…_

 _He can’t smell things well…_ Akaashi shrugged deviously. _Everyone else can, though._

_You said you were fighting with your best friend…_

_…I should have not included that._

_Too late_.

_Ennoshita’s father believes that the young children should be taught to speak and read lips instead of signing. His son accepts this. I disagree._

_Because it messes up their heads?_ Koutarou asked.

Akaashi blinked as though he didn’t expect him to understand, _Yes._

 _Can I ask more?_ Koutarou demanded excitedly.

The dark haired boy stared at him like he had said something astounding.

 

 

Akaashi had become a distraction during his own lessons.

Although Koutarou loved what he had to say, he found himself fixating on his eyes, or his neck, or the way his muscles moved, ignoring his hands altogether. His fantasies of defeating the Emperor were slowly supplanted by fantasies of seeing Akaashi every day, of harvesting with Akaashi, of introducing him to Kuroo, the ayakashi duo, and the rest of his family who would be, of course, restored. He dreamed of a world where he and Akaashi could live together, in the same house, without difficulty.

In reality he could find no option other than the place where they currently were.

Kenma had called it a lovers’ sanctum, something that Koutarou pretended to forget over the long dark winter when he thought of Akaashi’s face more than the faces of his siblings.

 

 

When Yukie and Haruki came back on his seventeenth birthday, a feeling he did not understand moved Koutarou to tell his sister the truth about Kaori-san. And with this confession came new understanding: it wasn’t until her twin was gone that Koutarou realized how much his sister relied on Akinori.

Without his presence, no words or physical comfort could ease her tears.

 

 

 _Come with me, Bokuto-san_ , Akaashi asked boldly the next summer. _It is lonely here._

They were sitting on a ledge overlooking the valley as the sun set. Their knees weren’t touching and the gap between them was the size of the universe.

Instead of lessons, the week had been spent exploring and talking. After whooping over finally surpassing his teacher's height, Koutarou had taken him into the heart of the forest, the lush meadows full of flowers, the dozens of streams and their waterfalls, all of his favorite trees and the best views. He’d excitedly described every place, making mistake after mistake that Akaashi mildly corrected.

 _I can’t_.

Akaashi turned, so he was facing him completely, only one leg hanging over the edge.

_Why?_

There was no reason not to tell him, it wasn’t something he’d been forbidden to do. Of course, there was the fear that he wouldn’t be believed. But even more than that, Akaashi straddled the gap between the real world, and the realm of spirits where Koutarou had been thrust. Bringing him across that gap might trap him too, somehow.

_I just can’t yet. But don’t worry about me, Akaashi, I’m the toughest there is. I don’t need people around!_

_You are ridiculous_ , the young man rolled his eyes.

There was a long pause. Akaashi’s knee was pressing against Koutarou’s thigh but he made no effort to move it.

_So Akaashi… why do you want me to come?_

The faintest blush rose to Akaashi’s cheeks.

 _Charity,_ he finally responded. _You’re pathetic out here all alone._

Koutarou turned eighteen, and only Haruki came back. They spent their hour together telling vulgar jokes, because, thanks to the curse, Haruki was still very much a thirteen-year-old in his mind.

There was little question a part of Koutarou would be twelve for the rest of his life.

 

“You nearly broke my arms off with that one, calm down,” Kuroo swung the raw blade of the katana above his head. “What’s got you so upset, anyway.”

Kuroo knew he couldn’t respond with a sword in his hands. Koutarou made a wrinkle-nosed face of disgust to let him know just how he felt.

“You’re like this every time he leaves,” Kuroo continued, unconcerned with the fact that they were sparring with swords that could cut a blade of grass in half from the top down. “Although it’s been going on for a lot longer than normal this year. You’re pouting.”

Koutarou scowled even harder.

“Oh no, don’t pretend to me that you aren’t, you enormous baby bird. Why don’t you just ask him to stay?”

Sheathing his sword with a slice of metal, Koutarou signed, _You have no idea how humans work, do you?_

“Nope. Well, a little, but most of it I choose to ignore because it is nonsense. Like, for instance, your current situation. If there is someone I want to see, I go find them. And because I am clever, and self-sufficient, it always works. So just… do that.”

 _I have to harvest the nettles tomorrow_ , Koutarou rolled his eyes. Akaashi had been so confused why ‘stinging nettles’ was such an important sign.

“Always the nettles… basically what’s going on is this: You have to choose between your family, or Akaashi. Which one do you want more?”

The question was a kick to the gut, and Koutarou slid to the ground like a landslide.

“Clearly this is a difficult question,” Kuroo looked down at him, shifting into a cat and curling up on his lap. “Too bad you can’t slice moral quandaries in half. You’re getting pretty lethal with that sword.”

 

The spring before his nineteenth birthday the men came back. This time with soldiers. Several of them were injured by Koutarou’s traps, but they quickly found the rest and took them down. Whatever power it was that sheltered the glade and kept them from seeing beyond the two trees held steady, but Koutarou, Kageyama, and Hinata watched in horror as large portions of the forest outside the clearing were systematically cut down.

They shot animals for no discernible reason, and set fires for even less.

The men left when the rains came, leaving a giant scar behind them.

And Koutarou could fit into no clothing but his father’s.

 

 

 _Why have you waited to show me this lake, Bokuto-san_?  

Koutarou didn’t really know the answer. He just stared out across the dark green expanse and swallowed hard.

Akaashi had been furious when he’d seen the desolation outside of the glade. He’d touched the boles of the trees as though they were old friends, stirring up Kouarou’s rage all over again. But there was nothing to be done. The two most powerful youkai in the vicinity were the crow tengu who had been absent for nearly seven years, and Kenma, who was uninterested in tiring himself. Even Koutarou, in his wildest fury knew going against soldiers with guns would be suicide.

The lake had been a place from his past life. One where he had spent hours with Haruki, most often swimming with his brother on his back. It had hurt to return. But the pain in Akaashi’s eyes at the desolation had hurt him just as much. 

 _Forgot!_ he laughed.

Akaashi knew he was lying. But he didn’t comment on it. Koutarou watched his eyes as they scanned the tree-lined far shore, the cliff face, and high waterfall where the stream filled the deepest part of the lake. Flowers bloomed everywhere. Other than Koutarou’s own glade, it was the most beautiful place in the forest.

It was certainly not a place that anyone forgot.

 _Akaashi come on, let’s swim!_ he urged.

 

 

They were stripped down to their fundoshi, which should not have been awkward, as it was a thing men did regularly. But Koutarou could only assume that regular men did not look like Akaashi. He was certain of it, actually, having seen quite a few regular men in various stages of nudity throughout their lives. He’d looked at them casually, because the parts of their bodies that were normally covered by clothing were of so little concern to him that it was unimportant.

Koutarou could not look at Akaashi. From the moment he’d unbuttoned the first button on his crisp white shirt, to the point where his trousers were around his ankles, Koutarou could not look. And he felt dreadful, because Akaashi might very well have been trying to tell him something of great interest. But the mere thought of seeing the other man’s body was overwhelming. He absolutely could not look.

After he heard the strange sound of a chain some distance from his feet, he finally pulled himself together enough to glance at Akaashi’s face, and only his face. He found that his friend was staring at his boot, biting his lip, and worrying his fingers. With a nervous exhale, Koutarou slapped him on the back, much harder than intended, though he could still feel the lines of muscle against his stinging palm.

Akaashi staggered forward and then glared.

_Bet you can’t swim as good as me, Akaashi!_

 

 

They were standing on the rock at the edge of the waterfall, Koutarou realizing two things. First of all, the waterfall was a lot louder and more intense then he remembered. Secondly, the rock had felt much larger when it was only holding an eleven-year-old and a very small twelve-year-old.

Because he and Akaashi were very much on top of each other. The twist of the dark haired man’s fundoshi was pushing into the skin under Koutarou’s hip, and he focused on that feeling, trying to ignore the skin to skin contact that was pretty much everywhere else.

The rock was in the shade and sprayed with water. Akaashi had begun to shiver, so Koutarou was tempted to put his arm around him, then realized he couldn’t for a number of reasons, least of which was being they would no longer be able to communicate properly.

_Ready to jump?_

Akaashi looked like he had just realized this was all a bad idea and he was regretting his very existence, but he nodded.

He should have grabbed his hand, that would have been a sensible thing to do. What he and Haruki had always done. Instead, being somewhat out of his mind, he wrapped his broad arms tightly around Akaashi’s shoulders, bringing them chest to chest, and flung them both off the edge.

The water slapped against Koutarou’s back with a tremendous stinging smack, which meant, at least, that Akaashi would be shielded from the worst of the pain. The man in his arms had instinctively burrowed into Koutarou’s chest, which he tried not to think about, for fear of keeping them under the water forever. Streams of bubbles ran up his body, tickling the backs of his legs when he finally kicked up, pulling them both to the surface, still holding them together while he tread water.

Akaashi’s dark curls were plastered to his face, a problem Koutarou didn’t have because his long hair was pulled back in the high ponytail he had taken to wearing. The slighter man sputtered in discomfort and frustration before wiggling free from Koutarou’s arms. Sticking out his tongue, he dove back under the water like a minnow.

Catching up with him was difficult, since Koutarou plowed though the lake like it was waist deep snow. It wasn’t so much that he was a bad swimmer, more that his entire philosophy of life was not conducive to being efficient in the water. While Akaashi had made himself small and sharp to slice through the gentle waves, Koutarou addressed the challenge more like a wall that he was trying to batter down.

When he finally reached Akaashi, it would have been clear to almost anyone that the laughing young man had let himself be caught. Koutaro was not almost anyone and he threw his captive over his shoulder and into the water victoriously. But the much cleverer man pulled Koutarou’s legs out from under him immediately and then swam away once more.

It took quite some time for Koutarou to catch him a second time. When it happened, it was in the shallows. His arms were tight around Akaashi’s waist, so he couldn’t wiggle away. They were both panting heavily when Akaashi’s hands found his shoulders to drag himself into a standing position. Instead of his typical neutral expression, there was a giddy sideways smile.

Without thinking, Koutarou lifted his hand and touched his friend’s bottom lip with his thumb. Akaashi took a single, wavering inhale and his mouth dropped open, which left more plump lip exposed to the calloused skin.

He needed to stop. He absolutely needed to.

But he could not. Every person in the world has a limited source of willpower, and though Koutarou had not spoken for six and a half years through sheer force of his own will, he had finally reached the limit of what he could endure.

If he was going to destroy what they had, he might as well do it properly.

Lifting his other hand as gently as possible, he brought it to Akaashi’s cheek, delicate darker skin contrasting against Koutarou’s roughened, pale fingers. With a shaky exhale, the slighter man leaned into the touch. Hands on Koutarou’s shoulders slid inwards, until thumbs were stroking the back of his neck. With a last pull on Akaashi’s lip, Koutarou framed his face with his hands. They both stopped breathing. The world seemed to be caught in limbo, standing still until they made a move.     

His thumbs sliding against the smooth skin behind his friend’s jaw, Koutarou stared into the jade pool of Akaashi’s eyes. There were gold fish swimming there.

He flung himself in without hesitation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The school Akaashi describes is real (as well as the teacher), though I've filled it with Karasuno. More importantly, the educational philosophy he mentions, of lip reading and speaking over sign language, was a very real type of deaf instruction. It's called Oralism, and was generally forced upon deaf students by their hearing teachers as a method for them to become "functional" within hearing society. There is definite neurological evidence that being denied sign language from an early age is devastating to deaf and HoH children. What's more, this denial of sign language ripped them away from their culture. In this case, there was only one deaf school in Japan, but in the US where this had been going on much longer, the effects were much more severe. Currently, the predominant form of education in schools of the deaf is called total communication, which teaches sign language, and then lip reading and speaking, so that, as the name suggests, all bases are covered.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is a lot of sex in this chapter.

Koutarou discovered that kissing Akaashi, while pleasant, more than pleasant, phenomenal, more… incredible than anything he’d ever experienced in the whole of his bizarre life, had also probably been unwise.

Akaashi had kissed him back, nimble fingers caressing the delicate skin on the back of Koutarou’s neck. His soft lips had moved with confidence, like he’d kissed before as Koutarou had not, kissed many times, kissed so much that maybe he no longer knew the thrill of it. But the raw sounds that came out of his throat, huffs, whimpers and strangled noises, said otherwise.

Then he had stopped, neither of them able to form words, hands clinging to each other’s bodies, the slow waves of the lake lapping against their skin, chests pressed together.

Naked chests.

It was impossible to be sure what the wide-eyed look in Akaashi’s eyes had been, but Koutarou assumed it was shock and disgust at the way his arousal was pressed against the shorter man’s abdomen, heavy and insistent.

So he had pulled away, trying to figure out what he was supposed to say and having no real idea.

 _I must go back to my mother,_ Akaashi’s hands trembled, before gathering up his clothing and fleeing.

Yes, kissing Akaashi had been unwise, but Koutarou couldn’t stop reliving the memory.

 

 

He tore into the nettles, ignoring the hard-earned techniques he had discovered to minimize the pain. He ripped them out of the ground with his bare hands, destroying the roots, so they would never grow again. The tengu could curse him this time for all he cared.

This was the last harvest anyway. His family would live or die by the answer to one question: could Koutarou spin the yarn to knit the final haori in only half the time he normally had? Could he do this while every morning soldiers and workers passed the glade, each time feeding his paranoia that somehow they would find him. That they would try to tear down the sakura and maple trees. Somehow that seemed even worse. 

He tried to force himself to focus on these questions, and on the pain of the process itself, instead of remembering the feel of Akaashi’s lips against his, the soft skin of Akaashi’s naked waist, the way he had trembled against him. The way he had moaned.

But Koutarou had grown strong. He had lived under endless nettle stings and the oppressive weight of the curse for much too long to be easily distracted. Their horrors, the fear of them, were a part of his everyday existence. What caused him the greatest pain, the greatest ache, was, rather, the moment of absolute joy he had felt in the lake with Akaashi’s wondrous eyes gazing into his.

And how he had undoubtedly ruined that moment and, as a consequence, everything else that existed between them.

“So, I’m no expert, but I am pretty convinced this isn’t the right way to harvest stinging plants,” Kuroo sauntered out of the house, shifting from cat to man in a way so impossibly fluid it seemed instantaneous. “Although you are a fan of poisoning yourself so maybe it’s just your thing.”

 _I don’t want to deal with your baiting right now, Kuroo,_ Koutarou winced as his hands refused to move properly to make the delicate motions signing required.

Kuroo sat down on the stairs, his long knees leaning in opposite directions, “I will happily stop if you just tell me what happened to get your obi in a twist.”

There was a long pause while Koutarou ripped out several more nettle stalks.

_I kissed, Akaashi…_

“Bokuto you know you’ve got to have your hands where people can see them, that’s the whole point of–” 

Koutarou turned, held up his hands over his head and moved them violently.

_I KISSED AKAASHI, YOU STUPID CAT._

Kuroo pulled back his head, puzzled. “Why are you sad? Is he… I mean, okay look, I don’t quite understand things like kissing. It’s not the same as mating, I’m pretty sure. And the only reason I ever do that is because I catch a scent and then feel like I’m going to die if I don’t. And not in a good way.”

Koutarou glared, but Kuroo was shaking his head and muttering, “not at all in a good way,” to himself as though the entire experience of being a male cat had been scarring.

Ignoring him, Koutarou threw himself back into his work.

“Hello hello hello!” Hinata broke the silence, emerging from the forest with Kageyama.

At nearly seven years old, the fox spirit’s red hair was almost completely white, and he leaned heavily on Kageyama’s arm. Kageyama still stood as a human with the same ramrod straight posture, but his movements were much slower. The angry spring in his step was gone.

“Bokuto kissed Akaashi.”

“The slender one?” Kageyama squinted as they approached. “Owlhead, that human is unsuitable to carry any young. Because he’s male.”

For a fleeting moment, Koutarou considered leaving his family as owls and drowning himself in the pond for good this time. 

“Yes, but,” Hinata sank down on the soft moss, “don’t you remember? What Kenma said about those men falling in love?”

“I remember they died and turned into asshole trees.”

“Tobio, you have lived in one of those asshole trees your whole life. Every single egg your mate has laid has been in one of those asshole trees!”

The crow spirit turned his head, elderly face red with embarrassment as he muttered, “Shouyou, y-you… do I it’s agh! You dumbass!”

“So anyway,” the aging fox spirit settled himself again, “are you going to do it again?”

 _He ran off_ , Koutarou signed while Kuroo interpreted, albeit in a very whiny voice.

“Oh, well it sounds like he’s interested then,” Hinata said earnestly. “I had to chase my mate for days. I fought off four other foxes! They were very strong. But I was the best in the end!”

“He was just the only one stupid enough to stick around that long,” Kageyama fluttered up into Haruki’s tree to take a nap.

Koutarou was exasperated, _That’s great, Hinata, but not how humans work. Running means people want to get away._

“I don’t understand you humans with your love, and stuff,” the small old man mused.

“I think I get it,” Kuroo jumped off the porch. “It’s like… well think of who you want to be around most.”

“Tobio,” Hinata said immediately though the crow in the tree cawed dismissively.

Kuroo nodded, “Exactly, and it’s Kenma for me! Or… maybe this bumbling oaf,” he tipped his head at Koutarou. “I’d hate to have to pick. Good thing cats do what they want.”

Koutarou signed something extremely vulgar that Kuroo refused to interpret.

“So, love, it’s when you’ve got this companion who you always want around, but you also want to have as a mate. Oh, and mating feels good. Really good.”

Hinata scrunched up his nose, “That seems hard to imagine. It’s more like, scratching something itchy cause if you don’t…”

“…scratch it you’ll die!” he and Kuroo finished together looking pleased with themselves. “For humans it feels good though,” Kuroo added with a shrug. “They do it all the time for no reason. Sometimes they have companionship without it, or the other way around. Honestly, I don’t understand them. Don’t even get me started on gender.”

Hinata stood up and unsteadily made his way to the porch where he leaned, scratching his chin, “I think you should kiss the pretty one again, Owlhead. If it feels good. And if he’s the person you want to be around most. I think that life for humans might feel even shorter than it does for us.”

Kageyama cawed.  

 _I have work,_ Koutarou signed petulantly as he turned, not caring if they could see it or not. They did not understand. He knew exactly one human who wasn’t also an owl. He had one single relationship he could not ruin, and that was the one with Akaashi.

Unfortunately, he was thinking so hard he walked right into the side of the house.

 

 

With a blackened eye and swollen hands and arms, he sat alone next to the hearth in the dying light of the sun. Kuroo had long since left, after Koutarou had insisted he give him space. Although Haruki had stopped recognizing Koutarou months ago, he too had woken and flown away to hunt in the dim twilight. Kageyama was asleep in his beloved maple tree.

After a thorough scrubbing that had turned into a full bath to remove any further nettle stings, there had been enough dock leaves to treat his extensive rash and bring down the hives. For the most part, the pain in his hands was nothing more than a dull echo as the need to scratch began to rise.

It was the pain elsewhere what was the problem.  

What had he done?

Koutarou had been taught little of love, neither the physical nor the emotional aspects. The concept as a concrete reality felt as confusing to him as it did to the youkai. He had no basis of judgment for what it was, or it wasn’t. He knew it had destroyed his family, though accidentally. He knew that it drove great men to their deaths. But he had witnessed none of these events. He hadn’t even seen the affection between his own parents which Yukie insisted had existed.

But he burned for Akaashi. In every way a person could be alight, he was on fire at the mere thought of him. The feeling surged though Koutarou’s soul, it made him feel strong.

Akaashi had given him words when he had none. And then he had given so much more. For just a single week every year, his quiet presence had given Koutarou so much that his heart felt full to bursting, yet left him desperate.

But just as strongly stood his fear of loss, the crippling knowledge that everyone he loved hung in the balance of his own actions. With the wrong choice, Akaashi might be lost too. Lost forever. Koutarou would do anything to keep that from happening. Anything.

Yet his sister had also offered anything to keep her lover safe. And with that bargain she had inadvertently cursed them all, and lost Kaori-san anyway.

It had been some time since Koutarou had wept outright. The amount of pain he’d endured had turned his sadness into the deep crushing weight that immobilized him during dark seasons, rather than the searing stings of everyday disappointment. The heaviness of his task had colored his world black and white. Lost or found. Cursed or freed. Succeed or fail.

Life or death.

But apparently he was due for a good cry, because he was sniffling, curled into himself, when Akaashi found him.

The steps on the porch were familiar, and Koutarou scrabbled to find some way of covering his arms and wiping his face, to hide the fact that he’d been weeping tears of frustration and rage into the crook of his arm. But he wasn’t fast enough.

 _Bokuto-san?_ Akaashi stood at the juncture of light and darkness. He was dressed the same western-style clothing he always wore, a white button-up with sleeves rolled, suspenders, and dark brown trousers. But even from a distance it was clear his clothing was drenched, as though he’d been caught in the early evening’s rainstorm and never went home.

_Hello. Hello. Hello._

After his greeting, he refused to look at whatever Akaashi was saying. Which was rude and cruel and maybe that would make him leave, so Koutarou could be alone with his well-deserved misery.

 _Go home, Akaashi_ , Koutarou signed across the room without turning to look. _Just leave like you want._

The steady presence in the doorway indicated that his guest had made absolutely no effort to move.

With a long pause and a mirthless smile, Koutarou turned and invited him in.

Akaashi walked quickly across the floor in his western silk stockings, the legs of his trousers dragging a bit with the damp. He knelt in front of Koutarou, his scowl severe.

_You’re covered in a rash. Your hands… your face is also hurt… Why?_

_I walked into the house_ , Koutarou signed sullenly, explaining only half the question. Before he could cross his arms again, Akaashi caught one and would not let go. His fingers were cold and soothing as they traced across the rash-ridden skin. He seemed to be waiting for an explanation that he wasn’t getting.

 _Bokuto-san. I am not going to leave. But since you will not tell me about this…_ green eyes burned into his, _or anything, at least let me help._

Koutarou was helpless to refuse. 

 

 

He had been fascinated with Akaashi’s hands for some time, but never had he allowed himself to imagine they’d be touching him quite like this. Covered in an oil that smelled of peaches and lavender, his long fingers massaged into Koutarou’s swollen hands, gently and insistently. Koutarou found himself trembling, and he insisted to himself that it was from the stinging pain.

It wasn’t.

In fact, the pain was receding as the dark-haired boy, no, Akaashi was certainly a man now, drew the oil across each finger, gently tugging at the webbing in-between. He focused particularly on Koutaro’s work-roughened palms, digging his thumbs into the thick padding at the heel of each hand.

It stung and soothed all at the same time.

Akaashi settled himself between Koutarou’s splayed legs and with greedy hands, pushed back the sleeves of his yukata. He ran oil-drenched fingers down his forearm and past his elbow, reaching higher and higher with every pass, until they were caressing the soft skin under Koutarou’s bicep, massaging the muscle then reaching up further even to his shoulder and the parts of his back that Akaashi could reach.

Koutarou was shivering in earnest now, his breath coming in little pants, unable to drag his eyes away from the man sitting between his legs. Akaashi’s own pupils were blown wide and dark, the thin green halo flickering in the light from the fire.

He looked beautiful and dangerous, more otherworldly than anything Koutarou had ever seen in his wild, wild life.

 _When you kissed me_ , Akaashi finally pulled away, skin shining in the lamplight, _I left because I was frightened_. He was kneeling now, but had not changed his position, close, so close, to Koutarou.

 _I’m sorry!_ Koutarou nearly hit both of them in his urgency to respond, _I didn’t mean to scare you, Akaashi! I just…_ he trailed off, not knowing how to say, “I thought you were beautiful,” in a way that didn’t make him sound like someone who was taking advantage.

Akaashi held up his hand, interrupting him, _I was frightened that I would not be able to stop. And we’d not discussed it. I wish to do that now, but on one condition._

 _What?_ Koutarou asked nervously.

 _Please call me,_ Akaashi gracefully fingerspelled signs Koutarou was only vaguely familiar with. He recognized them, but only as signs, a second language in which he did not think. He wanted to hear them in his mind, and that meant he had to remember what those kanji stood for, how they had sounded when Kuroo or Kenma had said them.

 _Once more?_ his hands trembled as he asked.

_Kei ji._

Long fingers wrapped themselves around his hand, something Akaashi had never done before. He guided Koutarou as he fingerspelled the name, and the motions gained substance in his mind.

 _Kei ji,_ Koutarou signed, finally understanding. He desperately wanted to hear the sound of it roll from his own tongue, though he’d hardly recognize his own voice anymore. But then, this, the graceful clasp and swing of fingers, _was_ Akaashi’s name, more than sounds ever would be.

He bit his lip, realizing he’d never even tried to sign his name. Because he couldn’t say it, it had essentially become a secret, something he hadn’t even told Kuroo, since the bakeneko had known his family name (and a lot else) for reasons Koutarou could only label as “cat.” It had remained unmentioned, not out of intention, just lack of necessity. His given name had become something he kept inside, a part of his old life, something he only heard when he saw his brothers and sister.

After a few nervous fumbles he managed to make the signs work.

_Kō ta rō._

_Big light_ , Keiji… his name was Keiji… chuckled. _I wonder if your parents suspected._

Koutarou, for once in his life, blushed at the bemused compliment, his hands stuttering as he tried to brag. _Of course they did! I… am the best and…_

 _Now,_ Keiji saved him from his own awkwardness, _can we discuss what happened in the lake…?_

A nervous nod was all he had to give.

_To begin with, I need you to know this._

Koutarou cocked his head in a question, and then Keiji was grasping the collar of his yukata, leaning forward, and pressing their lips together in one smooth inescapable motion. He was more insistent than before, edging open Koutarou’s mouth, immediately running his tongue around the delicate lining of the larger man’s lips. It happened so quickly, Koutarou’s hands were still in the air in shock when, with Koutarou’s lip between his teeth, Keiji leaned back into his kneeling position, letting go of the flesh just before the threshold of pain.

 _I want to make love to you,_ he signed.

 _Why?_ wide golden eyes stared dumbly, too shocked to ask a more self-respecting question.

Keiji rolled his eyes, _Because you are ridiculous, among other things._

Koutarou’s nose wrinkled in protest, only to feel a soft hand graze lightly across his jaw.

 _Because you are gentle._ Keiji did not break eye contact, and Koutarou’s attention flickered between his face and his hands. _Because you begged me to teach you my own language. Because you saved me at great cost to yourself. Because you share the little food you have with me, even though I am a glutton. Because in everything, you are magnificent and desperate all at once._

Despite himself, Koutarou gave a silent bark of laughter.

_Because you are hideous and gorgeous, life and death, like an exploding volcano. And I want you for myself._

He could form no coherent response. His mouth hung open, hands still, completely stupefied.

_Because I have fallen in love with you, you simpleton._

Koutarou didn’t have to say anything, because he had pressed Keiji to the floor.

 

 

Keiji was impatient, and perfectly happy to roll around on the bare wood, but Koutarou was concerned about splinters, and also desperately nervous because although he knew in theory how to have sex with a man, he felt it was a delicate process, and he neither wanted to hurt, or be hurt in its execution.

Although he wanted it so much that it was physically painful.

So he picked up the man who was trying to suck a permanent bruise into his neck and carried him and a lamp into the back room, where he had already unrolled his futon, not expecting a guest. He sat Keiji down unceremoniously on the thick cushion and kneeled in front of him, looking everywhere but into his dark eyes.

 _I don’t know how_.

 _I do._ Keiji responded immediately, his chest heaving.

 _How do you know?_ Koutarou demanded like a petulant child. Jealousy rolled through him, unexpected and searing.

Keiji raised his eyebrows, _Because I spend every summer at a brothel._

It took Koutarou a great deal of time to decipher the kanji in the last word. They seemed familiar, and once they clicked, his eyes grew big.

 _I am not a prostitute,_ Keiji shook his head, mildly amused at Koutarou’s shock. _My mother was, though now she is a cook. She chose to stay at the brothel when her freedom was purchased and given to her. The workers are like my sisters and aunts and brothers. I’ve just… heard many things. And saw some. And… experimented with Ennoshita a few times,_ he admitted, eyes nervously flickering up to see how Koutarou would respond. When he didn’t, Keiji continued, _I know that it’s a point of custom and power that the younger is the one who receives…_

Koutarou stilled his hand, _If somebody needs that to think they’re strong that’s stupid! Plus, since you know more, I think I should…_

A visible shiver danced across Keiji’s body.

_I will make you feel so good, Bokuto-san._

 

Western style clothes were difficult to remove. Koutarou’s hands were still a bit stiff, but the ridiculous contrivance of _buttons_ would probably difficult during the best of times. His fingers shook at Keiji’s neck with focus and nerves as he tried to move the tiny piece of shell through the impossibly small slit in the fabric.

Keiji was not making it any easier, running his fingers through Koutarou’s unbound hair, around his ears, and down the back of his neck. His exhales were more like quiet noises of pleasure, rich and earthy sounds that followed no presupposed script.

It was then that Koutarou realized with terror that he could not make a sound through the entire experience.

Maybe. Was a noise during sex an inadvertent sound? It had to be, if Keiji was making them. But Keiji laughed out loud sometimes, and made many other noises that he would consider intentional. Koutarou was not going to risk it. He was neither going to lose this moment, nor damn his entire family in the process.

It would be entirely too bitter either way.  

If he could stay quiet through thousands of stinging nettles, nine suzumebachi stings, and falling into the hearth as a result of temporary paralysis, he most certainly could stay quiet when Keiji…

Teeth scraping against one of the tendons in his neck nearly made him reconsider.

His hands trembled on the last button, full of the entire spectrum of anticipation, from eager to terrified. He loosened the fastening only to realize that the shirt was still bound by suspenders and tucked into trousers. Without moving his mouth from Koutarou’s neck, Keiji unhooked the wretched device and threw the straps over his shoulders. Then he pulled back, flushed and full of the sort of unbridled delight that Koutarou had never even imagined he could show, and all earlier anxieties fell away.

He pulled his hands off of Koutarou’s shoulders long enough to sign something that he did not understand. It was quite possibly obscene, since Keiji’s face was devilish as his hands moved tantalizingly slowly.

Then he pushed Koutarou so he was no longer kneeling and sat in the larger man’s lap.

Desperate hands all but ripped off Keiji’s shirt after that. As Koutarou kissed his trembling throat, the dark-haired man threw back his head, his hips thrusting involuntarily, brushing him against Koutarou’s straining hardness. It was Keiji’s turn to scrabble at clothes, pulling at Koutarou’s obi to loosen his yukata. This garment seemed just as unfamiliar to Keiji as his western clothes were to his partner. His clever fingers eventually resorted to yanking, which made the wrapping even tighter.    

Stilling Keiji’s hands, Koutarou undid the obi himself, letting it fall to the floor, and his yukata fall slack. Cool fingers pushed aside the material, freeing his shoulders and chest. Keiji surged forward and they were skin to skin, lips crashing together. Slim hips thrust against his, and Koutarou wrapped his arms tightly around the elegant expanse of Keiji’s shoulders. Their mouths separated and Keiji’s found his ear, worrying it with his teeth. For every jolt of pleasure, blunt fingernails dug just a little deeper forming half moons on Keiji’s back.

With abrupt force, Koutarou was pushed backwards onto the futon. Sprawled on his pillow, he opened his eyes to see the sort of erotic vision that perhaps Akinori had been trying to paint all of his young life.

Keiji’s skin glowed in the lamplight, his bare, heaving chest already sparkling with sweat. He was straddling Koutarou, his shirt still tucked into one side of his trousers and trailing on the futon, his suspenders falling down the curve of his backside. A trail of dark hair spanned the distance from his bellybutton to his trousers. Trousers that he was very obviously straining against.

Staring at Koutarou with a slackjawed expression of pure lust, Keiji started to roll his hips.

Slamming his head against the pillow, Koutarou caught his own wail in his throat and shoved it back into his lungs with a savage bite to his own bottom lip. He worried the bruised flesh as hard as he could, afraid to look, afraid that he’d be unable to stay quiet.

Fingers on his jaw brought him back to the moment, and Keiji, still tormenting him with his uneven rhythm asked with a smirk.

 _Does that feel good?_  

His beautiful face wasn’t smug for long, as he quickly found himself on his back.

Buttons again, or at least one, but even more terrible than the tiny shirt buttons, this one was load-bearing, held in its prison with actual tension. Koutarou tried to be patient, he tried valiantly, but when he looked up, Keiji was sucking on his own fingers, his eyes even more hooded than before.

Gnawing on his lip, Koutarou ripped off the button, and the zipper, and… the entire piece of clothing, leaving two legs that were no longer connected.

He held up the coarse fabric with an awkward grin before Keiji yanked it out of his hands with a frustrated huff. _You are ridiculous!_

Koutarou grinned back, _That’s why you love me._ With each hand, he grasped a trouser leg and ripped them both off.

Honestly and truly, he did not know what was supposed to come next. But that didn’t particularly matter, because he would be quite pleased to stare at Keiji, collapsed and panting on the futon for the rest of eternity. His erection was straining against the white cotton of his fundoshi, and even in lamplight Koutaoru could see the pink of his skin through the fabric. His only other garment was his silk stockings, rumpled down around his ankles.

He pulled off those too.

 _Take off that yukata_ , Keiji’s hands trembled but his face was insistent, _now._

Koutarou did as he said, which really only involved standing up.

 _Like what you see?_ he was asking when Keiji yanked him back down to the futon, straddled his knees. He ran his tongue directly across the cotton covering Koutarou’s erection. The reaction was immediate, a jerking thrust, and with that lift of his hips, Keiji’s hands reached for the twist in fabric and quickly unraveled it, pulling the loosened undergarment down and off his legs, then crawling back up to resume his ministrations on bare skin.

Koutarou had one hand in his mouth, and the other was yanking in dark curls, as his hardness was plied and sucked in the soft, wet, heat of Keiji’s mouth. Green eyes met his, pulling back slowly until he was suckling the head, then pushing forward until Koutarou could feel the press of his throat.

 _Please please please please,_ he signed and mouthed.  

Keiji pulled away, wiping his mouth on his hand. As soon as his lips were free, Koutarou was kissing him, pulling their chests together with one hand, while struggling to free Keiji’s erection with the other. In a fit of desperation, he slid it out of the side of the white cotton and began to stroke. The slighter man stilled him almost immediately, reaching behind himself to unwind his fundoshi.

Completely nude, he pushed the wild-haired man back down.

 _Don’t make me finish before I start, Koutarou_. 

 

 

The air was thick with the scent of peaches and lavender as Keiji pressed his finger inside of him.

He had kissed him first, starting with his mouth then taking an achingly long time making his way down his chest, soft kisses alternating with nips that danced on the edge of pain. He’d ignored where Koutarou had most desperately wanted to be touched and jumped instead to the inside of his thigh, sucking and biting until they were most certainly dappled with bruises. Pulling the oil out from places unknown, he’d drenched the fingers on one hand.

 _Take deep breaths,_ he’d signed first, _flick my ear if you want me to stop and can’t sign._

Koutarou’s thighs were trembling at the sensation. Not necessarily wrong, but not right either, and certainly not pleasurable. Just overwhelming.

 _Relax_ , Keiji leaned down to kiss up his thigh then took his cock into his mouth again. The combination of the two sensations became overwhelmingly pleasurable and Koutarou gnawed on his bottom lip to keep from moaning.

 _You’re doing so well, Koutarou_ , he signed with one hand while adding another finger.

 _I want to draw you like this,_ Keiji’s eyes were dark as he added a third. _You’re beautiful_.

For his part, Koutarou could do little other than sign Keiji’s name as fingers thrust inside him, occasionally grazing against a place that made his vision go blurry.

One hand still occupied, Keiji leaned forward as far as he could, pulling at Koutarou’s arm to bring them together in a deep kiss.

 _Please Keiji, please_ , Koutarou begged. He received a gentle kiss on the cheek for his trouble.

Easing back to his original position, Keiji removed his fingers, gentle and slow. After wiping his hand on his destroyed trousers, he reached for the bottle of oil again. Kneeling high so that Koutarou could watch, he drizzled it over his own cock, then fisted it.

_Are you ready?_

Koutarou was so ready he was going to die, but he didn’t have the mental faculties to say that in his second language. So he just nodded as desperately as a man had ever nodded.

Adjusting his hips several times and pushing Koutarou’s thighs forward, Keiji pressed himself inside, whimpering almost immediately. He went slow, urging Kouatrou to relax as he moved deeper. The larger man was shaking violently, so Keiji put his hand on Koutarou's erection and began to stroke until he had pressed himself in to the hilt. With a nervous exhale, he leaned forward until they were chest to chest, hearts beating together.

The tranquility of the moment was disturbed by a shake at his shoulder.

  _If you don’t move, I’ll die!_ Koutarou begged melodramatically.

He snapped his hips forward, gently but just a bit jarring, reaching up at the same time to scrabble for Koutarou’s mouth. And just like that, the larger man was wrapped around him, nails digging into his back, ankles crossed behind his thighs. Keiji pulled away from his mouth to look down into wild eyes, gold nothing more than a glittering halo around deep black. He kissed his cheeks, the corners of his eyes, his nose, gently, delicately while he moved inside of him. Koutarou’s hands found his face, then tangled themselves through his hair.

Keiji was groaning, he could feel the sounds as they vibrated their way out of his throat. Beneath him, Koutarou jolted at a certain point during each movement, a sign that he’d found his mark. Paying closer attention, Keiji made his thrusts shallow and quicker, almost bouncing. The larger man thrashed beneath him, a thin red stream of blood rolling from his lip. He had bitten it until it was huge, swollen and raw.

And Keiji confirmed what he had long suspected. Koutarou’s silence was voluntary.

He had no idea why, but what he did know was this: if he endured both extreme pain and extreme pleasure in silence, his reasoning had to be important.

Stilling himself, he took one hand and gently pulled Koutarou’s bottom lip away from his teeth. Koutarou looked up at him, vulnerable and nervous. Gently but firmly, Keiji covered his lover’s mouth with his hand. Koutarou’s eyes were wary, then grateful.

Keiji’s cock pulsed.

If he didn’t start moving again, he was going to die.

Unable to be generous, he thrust deeply, slamming to the base with each motion. Beneath him, Koutarou looked completely destroyed, his hair wild against the pillow, tears streaming from his eyes. The hand pressed over his mouth was unspeakably erotic. Feeling that he couldn’t hold on much longer, Keiji snaked his free arm between them and sloppily pumped Koutarou’s cock, his thrusts growing spastic and uneven. He’d intended to pull out, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t.

He wanted Koutarou to be utterly wrecked beneath him.

And with that thought, he was finished, his entire body stiffening, riding out his pleasure against Koutarou’s tight heat. His eyes stayed open, and he saw golden eyes watching him in sheer awe, until they fluttered close, the larger man’s body shaking, his own spend landing hot and wet between them.

Keiji pulled out, no longer able to bear the spasms of Koutarou’s body, and he collapsed on his chest, feeling his own whimpers vibrate between their chests. Strong arms wrapped around him and found his way into his hair. Gentle kisses were dropped along his hairline.

And under such tender care, he fell into a deep, satisfied sleep.

 

 _I love you,_ was the first thing he saw when he woke.

Koutarou was lying next to him, far enough back that he must have been watching Keiji sleep. His smile was as big as the morning.

_I didn’t say it last night. I was so overwhelmed, I forgot. But I love you, Keiji. I think I loved you when we had the onigiri and then almost died, I just didn’t know what it was._

There were many potential responses, and Keiji knew, logically, which ones to avoid. And yet he did not listen to himself.

_Come with me._

Koutarou’s happy face fell, a cloud across the sun.

 _Please don’t ask me again,_ he said after a long still moment.

 _But why?_ Keiji insisted against his better judgment. _Why are you here, alone? Why is it not that you cannot speak, but that you must not? You have been here for so long, years before I even met you. And you are not a man who loves solitude._

 _Keiji please stop,_ Koutarou trembled like he was being physically hurt.

The dark-haired man rolled to his back and let his hands fall to tremble in anger and hurt on his chest. But he could not move his gaze completely. Koutarou’s eyes had closed tightly, as though he were fighting off something terrible.

They sat, still, for a long time.

 _The twenty-first of March, an hour before sunset,_ Koutarou finally signed.

_What?_

_Come back then,_ he sat up. _If you do, I promise, you’ll understand everything, Keiji. And maybe… if you still want…_

 _That’s in the middle of the term, Koutarou,_ Keiji rolled on to his elbows. _I cannot easily leave._

 _I know. But… if you don’t come then…_ the words ‘you’ll never believe me,’ danced on the tips of his fingers, but Keiji never saw them.

 _I’ll still love you,_ he finished. _But please don’t come back before then,_ he looked down, full of self-loathing. _Or I might do something stupid._

When Keiji left, he did not look back, though sharp eyes could see his legs tremble beneath him.

He left no book behind.

 

 

On Koutarou’s birthday, Haruki stayed in his tree, asleep. The recognition had long been gone from his eyes.

 

 

Later that autumn, Kuroo found Hinata and Kageyama together, passing to the blissful peace of ripe old age, each in the company of the one he held most dear. Kenma rushed from the mountain, red with tears. Together the three mourned them with laughter and stories, in hopes that their spirits remain pure.

That winter, Koutarou hardly slept, nor ate, as the pressing stress of his task bowed his shoulders to the ground.

Yet he knit Yukie a lace haori of such magnificence that the Empress herself would have been proud to wear it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> he really would not have known how to take off buttons. a historical fact.
> 
> there was a divide in clothing styles in this time period, with Western fashion being required by agents of the Emperor, and thus becoming a very popular trend. clothing at this time for women was often kimono fabrics made into Western dresses. they were very beautiful. rural and peasant folk could not afford such clothing (nor did they necessarily want it) so they wore kimono and all its derivations. either way, buttons were a struggle as they had not been part of clothing before. Western clothes in general were a hinderance in Japanese homes, with shoes that were difficult to take off, and tightness in certain areas that made sitting on the floor difficult. because of the new emphasis on the military, uniforms were also very popular, leading the the emergence of the gakuran school uniform, modeled after soldiers uniforms.
> 
> also, according to several sources I found (from lube manufacturers) a more accurate form of lube would have been a type of mashed up yam... soup. but I just... couldn't, especially given the unreliability of the sources. sex is hilarious and weird but i did want a certain atmosphere for this scene.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there is an instance of the r-word in this chapter. it pained me as much to write as it will pain you to read, but i believe the instance is historically appropriate and integral to the scene and development of the characters.

On the seven-year anniversary of the curse, men came to chop down the sakura and maple trees.

Keiji did not know it was the seven-year anniversary of anything, he simply arrived on the day and approximate hour that he was told, after leaving his school for good over a strong difference of opinion regarding their curricular choices.

For the past six months his heart had been torn in half: one side reliving the passion and gentle affection of being in Koutarou’s arms, the other beyond furious that the man would offer him his body and heart so freely, but withhold even the tiniest sliver of the reasoning behind his solitary, silent existence.

Though silence was relative. Koutarou was almost insufferably talkative from Keiji’s perspective.

Regardless, the man’s pain and suffering were plain to see. He was a prisoner of the forest for reasons Keiji could not begin to comprehend. He had never had his stings treated, and his arms and cheek were pocked from the damage. On the night they had made love, Koutarou’s skin had been covered with a rash that looks suspicious like stinging nettles, but no one in his right mind would expose his body to the plant in such a direct way.

But, no one in his right mind would trap himself in the forest either. Especially not Sakanoshita. Keiji put no stock in superstition, or any religion, casually or enthusiastically, but even he had noticed the shiver up his spine whenever he walked through the two trees that guarded the entrance to Koutarou’s bewilderingly idyllic home. The forest was an eerie place that he both loved and utterly hated.

Yet it seemed at great risk. Every time he visited, the clearing in front of the trees looked more disturbed by humans.

This time, as he descended the mountain pass, the carnage was horrific. Animals of all types, especially birds, were scattered along the path, shot as though someone were practicing the art of murder for their own amusement. He passed a particular bird, a female snowy owl that looked like a mound of fallen snow from a distance. She was still alive, struggling helplessly just around the corner from the clearing. It was a pitiable sight, and a better man would have put her out of her misery.

Keiji did not have the stomach to try.

 

He saw pure disaster when the clearing came into view. A long tunnel of nothing extended into the forest at the opposite side of the glade, with piles of equipment in waiting for the next day of destruction. They were making a road where no road need exist.

But what was more disturbing was what he saw on the other side of the clearing. A group of men were gathered. Two were squabbling, one of them holding an axe as though he intended to fell a tree. Several in the group were soldiers. Keiji had no idea how they were expecting to cut down a tree this close to dusk. But it infuriated him, because those trees belonged to Koutarou. It seemed urgently important that he inform him of what was going on. For reasons Keiji didn’t understand, he believed in his very soul that the sakura and maple needed to be protected at all cost.

Walking casually but confidently, he headed towards the glade, knowing that looking like you belonged somewhere made it easy for other to ignore you. It was very difficult to look like he belonged in the middle of a forest, but he did his best.

He was almost through the arch, when someone grabbed his collar, yanking him back. It was the man with the axe, and he was furious. Keiji couldn’t even read his lips, he was speaking fast and… in an entirely different language. A bizarre-looking, redheaded man responded, probably in more of the same. He pulled the axe-holder’s arm off of Keiji’s collar and apologized in Japanese.

With a repeated nod of acceptance, Keiji walked toward the glade, when the redheaded man jumped in front of him.

“Where exactly are you going?” he seemed more curious than confrontational.

Keiji realized that none of these men could see the glade. And to them he looked completely mad.

He could speak. He could respond verbally, and tell them he was going to pick some kind of berry deep in what they probably saw as bracken, but he hated vocalization. Even with Tsukishima’s snide but helpful guidance, he still had no confidence how he sounded. Innkeepers thought he was a drunkard. Soldiers had picked fights with him for making fun of them to their faces. It was terrible, like trying to walk in the dark. What’s more, it reminded him of the torture that younger children at his school were being subject to, denied sign language and forced to do nothing but read lips from an inappropriately young age. As though what they were, their own language, was wrong. It was the thing that had destroyed his relationship with his dearest friend, and put him at complete odds with his father.

He could speak. But he wouldn’t.

So instead he tipped his head in the direction of the glade.

The soldiers surrounded him, both talking at once, extremely rapidly. One was even waving his gun. The man with the axe joined them, while the redhead looked nervous, clearly angry with his companions. Perhaps they were shouting, it was difficult to say. Keiji was normally an unflappable person, but this was his worst nightmare. Running through the possibilities in his mind, the only routes of escape he had were the two things he most hated in the world.

At least he thought.

Like a bolt of lightning, Koutarou appeared out of nowhere, though he'd not been visible in the glade or forest. With a flying kick, he knocked down the soldier with the gun, then cut the axehead completely off of the angry man's axe. He was dressed in truly magnificent regalia that had been tossed aside for dark western suits a decade ago. His hakama were black, with a white under kimono and a golden haori. His hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, and his katana glittered in the sun.

The men were screaming at him, but he brandished his sword, raising his eyebrow tauntingly, one foot firmly planted on the soldier’s rifle.

Then just as quickly as it had come, his grin fell. Keiji followed his gaze, to see a sly looking man holding a small gun in his hand, the barrel pointed directly at Koutarou’s heart.

“Don’t you know that samurai are all dead?” he asked, his lips pulled back in a sneer. “Holding a katana against people is illegal, in case you weren't aware. Soldiers can shoot on sight. But since you’re standing on their guns, I think I’ll do it myself.”

That was it.

Running between Koutarou and the man with the gun, Keiji pulled the thick chain out of his shirt. Despite being against his own skin every day of his life, it felt cold and uncomfortable in his hands. But that didn't matter, none of it mattered, all that mattered was that he hold the heavy metal of the seal high. The jaws of the men who could see it dropped, and the redheaded man made some kind of noise of delight, if his face was any indication. 

“I don’t think so,” Keiji declared, knowing Koutarou was gasping behind him. “In fact, I find it difficult to believe the Emperor has approved of this wanton destruction of forest. There is no feasible reason to build a road, or train tracks, over that mountain.”

The redheaded man slapped his shoulder encouragingly.

“So unless you long for a fate worse than death when His Majesty discovers what you have done, I want you and your men to leave Sakanoshita and never come back.”

The sly man put his gun back inside his jacket, looking Keiji up and down slowly.

“What a brave little retard,” he shrugged, “guess I’m beat.”

And he turned around, smiling to himself as though he'd just won after all.

Trying to hold back his trembling rage, Keiji turned to tell Koutarou not to fight him, that it happened all the time, that it wasn’t worth the trouble. Words that were on repeat in his own mind.

But Koutarou was gone.

 

 

The glade was not supposed to exist, and he knew no other way to get back to it. So Keiji had to wait much too long ,until the men left with their equipment and angry glares. The sun was setting when the last disappeared. Knowing that sunset was the important moment Koutarou had wanted him to see, Keiji all but dove into the glade, turning the corner to the strangest sight he’d ever seen in his life.

Five owls, all standing in a circle, with Koutarou in the middle. They were each wrapped in a strange contrivance that, on their small frames, looked like a burlap sack. But as Keiji’s eyes looked at each creature, he could see the quality of each progressive item improve, until he reached the one in Koutarou’s hands, a haori made of the roughspun yarn pulled into delicate lace that his mother would absolutely love.

Koutarou was frantic. He looked at the rapidly setting sun, then at Keiji, then at the owls, signing, _Where is she?_ more to himself than to his company.

Keiji scanned the birds, oddly wrapped in their enormous roughshod blankets, and looked again at Koutarou, frantically scanning the skies, the trees, for the sight of one more, one… lost…

Not bothering to sign, not bothering to do anything, Keiji dashed out of the glade. His feet slammed into the ground, mind blank with nothing but the fallen bird, like a pile of unmelted snow. Even with his abysmal sense of direction she was easy to find. He fell to his knees in front of the panting owl, red blood spilling everywhere from the bullet wound that went straight through her left wing. With no idea how long she’d live, Keiji scooped her up and dashed back to the glade in the final light of the setting sun. His ankle turned in a hollow, and he fell, dashing his own shoulder and face against the ground in order to protect the wounded creature. Scrabbling up and rushing across the moss, he caught Koutarou’s tormented face the instant the final beam of sunlight shone over the mountain.

With every muscle in his body, but with little hope, Keiji tossed his burden high into the air. The creature tried to fly, but could not, instead making weak, stuttering flaps as she soared in the wide arc Keiji had fixed.   

Right into the haori in Koutarou’s waiting arms.

The sun set and with it came a wind stronger than anything Keiji had ever encountered. It whipped around them like a cyclone, powerful enough to destroy the glade, perhaps the entire forest, given enough time.

And the promise that Koutarou made.

 _You’ll understand everything, Keiji_.

It was kept.

The wind caught the owl closest to him, spinning it around until a small man with wild hair rose from the chaos.

“KOUUUUUUU,” he bellowed, though Keiji could only see his reddened face and wide-open mouth. “You did it, Kou! I knew you would!”

Then there was another man, and another. One tall and nervous, one with a mountain of curls, one as severe as anyone Kejij had ever encountered, and one smirking deviously. They were all some level of bearded, with long disheveled hair. They were dressed in beautiful silks with the most exquisite feather patterns that Keiji, who lived part of his year next to an artists’ colony, had ever seen. They were dyed in subtle colors with deep vivacity that made him think of…

He looked up, and in Koutarou’s broad arms lay a beautiful woman. He was gazing at her as though she were the sun and the stars. She was wrapped in lilac silks dappled with pure white feathers, and her cherry colored hair trailed down to the ground. In place of her left arm was one white wing, still dripping blood.

 “Papa?” she asked the man holding her. Her lips were impossibly far to be read.

There was a long heavy pause as Koutarou sat her down delicately. He opened his mouth, licking his lips, worrying his teeth with his tongue as though he were checking to see that everything was there. Then he swallowed nervously. 

“Hey hey hey, nee-chan,” he signed the words as he spoke, tearing up at the sound of his own adult voice, a voice he’d never even heard, “I know I’m amazing and all, but even I’m not that good.” 

And as the other transformed men rushed Koutarou, looks of elation light bright on their shouting faces, Akaashi Keiji, the child of a Korean prostitute and, perhaps more significantly, the oldest son and greatest indiscretion of the Emperor of Japan, stood alone once again.

On the outside of a family looking in.

 

 

“Keiji!” Koutarou’s head popped out from behind the maple tree. He seemed enamored of the sound of his own voice, considering how much his mouth was flapping. Adorably, he had not stopped signing as he spoke, though he seemed to be getting the signs incorrect much of the time. “Why are you standing out there? Come meet my family! I’ll interpret for you! Yukie wants to meet you especially. You saved her! Well you saved everyone but you saved her the most. And Haruki knows who you are and maybe he kind of heard us that one night and now he remembers that so maybe you don’t want to meet him, I’m not sure...”

Keiji had been trying to read his lips and hands at the same time, and it had been impossible. Whatever Koutarou’s mouth was saying was not what his motions had indicated, that was for certain. The dark-haired man made a face that was confused and irritated – the latter, because he hated to be the former.

 _Sorry_ , Koutarou switched back to signing, and looked a bit relieved to be doing so. _There’s a lot more words when you speak. For me, at least. Please come and meet them…_

His hands stopped on the edge of begging.

_Keiji… what’s that on your neck? It’s what made the soldiers leave and it’s…_

_A chrysanthemum with fourteen petals,_ Keiji’s back straightened in anticipation of his inevitable rejection for something he probably should have confessed a long time ago.

_The seal carried by members of the Imperial family._

Koutarou’s eyes were enormous. _But you’re… that’s not…_

_Possible? I assure you it is._

_Then..._ Koutarou's hands were trembling _, why are you here?_

 _In his youth the Emperor became enamored of a young foreign prostitute,_ it felt strange to talk of his own conception, but there was no other way. _So enamored that left her with child, then purchased her freedom with the understanding that she would both keep his secret, and be with no other man for the rest of her life. I was born. Not only was I not pure Japanese, it was eventually discovered that I could not hear. An embarrassment, while my father was in the middle of modernizing Japan. A child such as myself was a problem._

Although he did not particularly love praising his father, there was no way around it.

_The Shogun would have had me killed as a toddler. My father, however, founded a school for deaf children. And even though he couldn’t acknowledge me, he gave me the seal to keep me safe._

Koutarou’s hands hung limp.

_I understand if you don’t want to see me anymore. My father had your father and many other samurai shot down during the rebellion…_

There was a long period of stillness. Keiji felt as though his heart was rolling out of his feet.

 _Well…_ Koutarou began. _I’m still angry, but samurai were not that great. I’ve been talking to Kenma about it for a few years now while he was training us, and they could kill people for any reason. Just cause they felt like it. And they did._

_Who… is Kenma? And… ‘us?’_

_He’s…_ Koutarou seemed to be trying to remember something.

_Speak, I will read your lips. But not slowly, I’ve told you it just makes it more difficult._

“Okay, sorry Keiji, but I couldn’t ask you to teach me what a nekomata was, right? It would have been strange. That’s what Kenma is, though. He’s that little calico that you cuddle with sometimes. Oh, and you know that black cat, Kuroo? He’s not just a cat, either, though he never let you see his human form. He’s licked your face more than once, just to make me mad. He knows how to sign too! At least read signs. And there was a crow, and a little fox ayakashi, and we used to talk. They passed on, and it made me sad, but I don’t think they’d want me to dwell on it. And yeah actually those two trees letting you into the glade, they used to be people! OH and when we were stung by hornets I absolutely did not take off your clothes!” 

Keiji blinked, his face so confused it was on the edge of revulsion.

_Huh?_

“Do you need me to say anything faster? Was I going too slow? Just teach me ayakashi names and we can go back to signing. I’m kinda more used to it anyway, it keeps my mind calmer. I can’t make myself shut up when I’m speaking.”

_No, it’s just a lot to take in. I didn’t believe in those things. And you can’t shut up regardless._

Koutarou glared, then cleared his throat. _What I’m trying to say, Keiji, that even if I still wanted revenge… you saw me out there. I’m really good with a sword now. Really, really good. But I couldn’t stand against a single gun. And samurai, maybe not my father, but maybe him too, stood against people in the same way those people were and hurt them. I don’t think we should have them anymore. Either kind, but I can’t do anything about soldiers. It wouldn't be fair for me to judge one side, and not the other._

_So what does that mean…?_

He was interrupted by Koutarou’s sister, who skidded to a stop right in front of them, her wounded wing bound in deep red cloth.

“Hello,” she panted, making it troublesome to read her lips, “my name is Bokuto Yukie. I hope I’m talking at the right speed. I am eternally grateful for what you did for me, our family, and Kou especially, Akaashi-san. And I will do anything to thank you–”

“Hey! not this again!” the man with the curly hair protested, coming up behind her. 

“Anything,” she insisted, “but the woman I love has forgotten me, thanks to this curse, and I am going to go make her remember.”

Then she was gone, running at top speed, her hair and delicate white haori trailing behind her.

“Okay nee-chan, just remember you have a bird’s wing instead of a hand,” the shortest brother called after her. “I guess that’s not a big deal in the face of true love, but the village is going to be a bit shocked. Oh, hi, I’m Bokuto Haruki, former resident of the gingko tree and you are Akaashi Keiji, very loud during intimate encounters.”

Keiji shrugged mildly. He probably was. He felt a bit embarrassed, but not as much as he thought everyone expected him to be. Maybe life at a communal school had desensitized him to this kind of mortification. It wasn’t as bad as being walked in on by Azumane, certainly.

“I think you just killed Kou, scrawny,” the smirking brother drawled, tipping his head toward Koutarou who was burying his embarrassed face in his tallest brother’s shoulder.

The man waved awkwardly, “Bokuto Wataru, thanks for the help.”

“Bokuto Akinori, head of this… family. Have you ever considered being an erotic model? There’s definitely a market for it, and you have the look. For authenticity, you can sit on my brother’s face during the mod–”  

The most imposing of the brothers, the one with the fullest beard, put Akinori in a headlock, “Bokuto Tatsuki. Thanks very much for saving our lives.”

Keiji gave a sharp nod of acceptance before his back was slapped hard.

“Bokuto Yamato. There’s not much else to be said. I never expected I’d wake up from my stint as an owl to meet a handsome prince who was making the beast with two backs with my baby brother, but life is full of magic, wouldn’t you say?”

Keiji looked down and realized his chrysanthemum seal was still hanging where it could be seen. He nervously tucked it into his shirt.

“Don’t worry, little man, we will keep it a secret.”

Koutarou finally pulled himself together long enough to ask if Keiji could give he and his brothers a moment. The five scraggly men and their anachronistic youngest brother gathered together in deep discussion while Keiji made his way into the glade.

 

 

The two cats were playing with a ball of rough spun yarn on the porch. Keiji approached them tentatively, now knowing they were more than they seemed. But they paid him no mind. The calico had grown weary of the game, anyway. Since they felt it unnecessary to reveal themselves, he simply sat next to them until they were both somehow on his lap.

The calico was gently batting his finger when Koutarou finally returned, eyes teary but a focused grin on his face. His shoulders were different, as though years of tension were gone. 

_Keiji, I–_

His excitement was cut off by a huge gust of wind. It was broader this time, not nearly as destructive as before, but it blew dust into Keiji's eyes until he had to close them.

When the world was once again visible, the cats on his lap were now sitting on either side of him. As humans. One tall, dark, and wild, one tiny, pale, and delicate. Both of their faces were grim. Under the gingko tree, Koutarou had drawn his sword.

The dark one nudged his arm, _I interpret? Not too good this way, but I’ll try._

 _Thank you, Kuroo,_ Keiji replied.

“You again?” Koutarou bellowed at the dark-feathered tengu in front of him. “I did it! I did what you said! Not only that, but I learned a second language, bushido, and fell in love with a prince! Because you didn’t realize that I am the best! Now what do you want? Are emperor’s sons off-limits too? Have you ever thought about putting up a sign?”   

“Hey there, little horned owl, calm down,” the tengu grinned. “You’re misinterpreting my presence here. I came to congratulate you! No one’s ever broken this curse. The whole reason your village is called Owl Valley is because I keep turning its idiotic inhabitants into owls. So I’m pleased! Once a curse is broken, I can stop using it. We’d both been cursed, Bokuto-san. And now we’re free.”

Koutarou lowered his sword suspiciously.

“As thanks, I’m here to give you a gift.”

“Oh!” he brightened up. “What kind?”

“Well, I’m about to fix your broken lover so that he can hear.”

The tengu had made no attempt to get confirmation that such a thing was a good idea. He was just doing it, as though changing someone's body was the same as repairing a broken fence. His arm was rapidly lowering to slam his staff into the ground, the rings faintly jingling against each other, as several unlikely things happened:

Kuroo wrapped Keiji in his arms and bounded onto the roof.

Koutarou’s katana flashed through the air in a downward arc.

Kenma stood up without being asked.

In a cacophony of metal, the tengu’s staff hit the ground, along with his hand, and a cloud of feathers. Blood rolled down Koutarou’s weapon, dripping into the moss and hissing. 

“Did you… just cut off my wing?” the tengu growled lowly as the skies began to darken around him. The smell of an incoming thunderstorm grew thick in the air.

But Koutarou was not cowed. Just the opposite. His eyes were narrow, brows furrowed, jaw tight. The look on his face sent a frisson of terror down the tengu’s spine.

“Keiji is not broken,” he snarled. “If you want to change his body, give him the choice.”

On the roof, in very sloppy signs, Kuroo explained what was happening.

 _Take me to him_ , Keiji responded immediately.

 _You sure?_ Kuroo asked, already knowing the answer. He slid them both down the slope of the roof and marched protectively behind Keiji, his hands on his sword. 

On the porch, Kenma watched with wide, calculating eyes, his hands hidden within his sleeves.

The tension between Koutarou and his adversary was sharp as knives. The tengu’s unchanneled power and rage boiled behind him as he leaned closer and closer to Koutarou’s face.

“You pathetic little brat. Did you think I didn’t see? All the nights you cried yourself to sleep. All the idiotic mistakes you made. You would have died a dozen times over if it weren’t for that stupid cat. You didn’t break the curse on your own, you just got–”

“Thank you very much, but I’m not interested,” Keiji interrupted in what he hoped was a cold tone, forcing back the nagging self-consciousness that overwhelmed him. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“See,” Koutarou growled unheard next to him, still holding up his sword. He blinked in realization and added might more lightly, “Uh… sorry about your hand, Tengu-san. And wing. Not sure which is more important but… sorry.”

Behind him, Kuroo tried to smother a cackle into his sleeve.

The tengu reached behind him the same way he had when he’d pulled Yukie out of thin air. “You worthless little beasts,” he hissed, “I’m going to devour you, and scatter your bones to the four winds so your unhappy spirits roam forever.”

His own katana fell with the speed of lightning heading right for Keiji’s head. Neither Koutarou nor Kuroo was fast enough to stop him.

But Kenma was.

“Keishin,” he sighed, bending the blade he had caught with his bare hand into an arc, and tossing it behind him, “when is the last time you had a day off?”

“Oh. It’s been about two hundred and fifty years,” the youkai said through gritted teeth, a vein in his forehead popping..

“Take one now,” the nekomata yawned. “Maybe two.”

 

 

After dramatically retelling every single bit of the showdown, even the parts that Keiji had deciphered on his own (that being the bulk of the situation), Koutarou formally introduced him to Kuroo and Kenma. Kuroo didn’t look sheepish at all over his untoward behavior, instead asked Keiji why he always smelled like peaches, and seeming very disappointed when he was told it was a treatment for dry skin. Kenma was silent for a long time, simply staring with wide, lamplight eyes. Finally he said, “I’d like to play you some day, Keiji.”

Just like that, he shifted to his cat form, this time with two tails, and wandered away.

 _I give space,_ Kuroo signed like a drunkard, _nap in house._

And they were alone.

Koutarou wrapped his arms around his waist, pulling them deliciously close, only to let go a moment later.

 _I keep trying to tell you something,_ he whined, _and it keeps getting messed up by dumb stuff._

Keiji raised his eyebrows, wondering just exactly how a recently rescued family, and an angry bird spirit were ‘dumb stuff,’ but he kept it to himself.

_So tell me now._

Koutarou took a solid step back and put his hands on Keiji’s shoulders for a long moment. _I talked to my family and told them I’d made a decision._

 _What kind of decision?_ he had his suspicions.

 _Well, about chores, mostly,_ Koutarou paused to scratch the back of his head. _I’ve never done them at home, and they always were kind of mad about it. But I told them they’d have to stay mad because I’m not going to do them for awhile longer._

Keiji was well aware at what he was getting at by this point, but his roundabout route was rather endearing.

Because Koutarou was nervous.

The taller man bobbed his head a few times and swallowed, looking at Keiji from under his eyebrows.

_Cause, I wanna… come with you, like you asked. I’m sorry I had to say no so many times, I had to make six haori out of stinging nettles and not speak for seven years._

Keiji snorted, _That’s what that rash was?_

_Yeah, but don’t worry about it, Keiji, I’m really really tough. I mean I got stung by suzumebachi for you and I didn’t even scream._

_And I nearly got shot for you,_ Keiji retorted, _also without screaming._

Koutarou huffed and sulked for half a second, before he remembered what it was that he was doing. _You said your school is full of jerks now, so maybe we could go meet some of your friends and start a new school instead! I could probably only teach real little kids, or I could teach parents who can hear! Since I can… hear them. Or maybe just do work around the place, I mean, you’d be in charge._

Keiji was most definitely not crying. And he wasn’t frowning to keep from smiling either. Absolutely no.

 _I thought you said you were done with chores,_ he huffed.

Koutarou laughed, and it was so loud that Keiji could feel the vibrations in his chest. _Only back at the house. Living with six people is smelly. I will miss Haruki though. But he’ll come and visit, once we’re settled._

_I haven’t said yes, yet, Koutarou._

_But you will,_ gold eyes were wild with happiness, _because you love me, and you’re perfect and I’m fantastic and I still can’t believe you’re sort of a prince, Keiji…_

Their hands were somewhat occupied after that because Keiji had grasped Koutarou by the collar and pressed their lips together in a long, leisurely kiss.

 

 

They woke before the sun the next morning to find Kuroo on the porch, all four blades of Koutarou’s father’s daisho tucked into his belt.

“Kenma’s taking a… hundred-year nap or something, and I figured, since you can’t carry these anymore, you might need some protection along the way. That is, if you can handle this much power at your disposal. And if you’re actually doing what I think you’re going to do.”

Koutarou nodded furiously. Keiji didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, so the bakeneko took it as an invitation to hop on the large basket on Koutarou’s back and fall asleep. He was extremely heavy, a fact Koutarou complained about nearly incessantly.

The sun was rising red and orange and pink, when they reached the crest of the pass, and Koutarou found himself looking back at the precious spot of green that had been both his self-imposed prison, and his home. He thought the sight was beautiful, but he wasn’t going to miss it.

“This year is going to be interesting,” he said to himself. Then he grasped the hand of the man he loved as they walked hand in hand into the future.

 

No future is perfect. Sometimes things go wrong, but the tengu had been right about one thing: Bokuto Koutarou, the seventh child of a seventh child was lucky. And he was particularly lucky in that he got most of his pain and suffering taken care of all in one go.  

And it was with this very same luck that Koutarou and Keiji lived happily ever after to the end of their days, which were exceedingly long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i will admit, i do not know how to make someone an ineligible prince of Japan (god I looked), however, based on the profound abelism in that time period, i believe a disability, and a half-Japanese heritage would do the trick.
> 
>  
> 
> Finally, many many thanks to lovemelikesunday. This story would not have been possible without her research help. 
> 
> I would add that if some of the issues involving deafness and the Deaf community have confused you, do some research into things like oralism, cochlear implants, etc from the perspective of Deaf people. 
> 
> Also, if you are deaf or HoH and you feel I've made a mistake in my representation, please contact me on my tumblr (it's the same as my username), or my gmail (again the same). I'd love to talk it out in a more private forum, because I want to be able to correct any errors I've made.


End file.
